Update: School Building Committee and School Committee

The School Building Committee will meet Wednesday, March 3rd at 8:00 am in the School Committee Room (36R Bartlet Street, second floor above the Senior Center). We are slated to vote on a final site option at this meeting. The two site options remaining are Option 1C (in front of the current building) and Option 2C (behind the current building). Option 2C is a phased-construction option, which means that part of the new Bancroft would be built on top of the current footprint. Neither of the remaining options would involve relocating the students during the course of construction.

The School Committee will also meet Wednesday, March 3rd at 7:00 pm in the School Committee Room. The purpose of this meeting will be for the School Committee to reconsider the enrollment composition of the new Bancroft School.

Additional notes on process:

The Traffic Analysis was presented at the SBC meeting on February 24th, but is still in draft form, so is not yet available to be posted online.

The Geo-Environmental Analysis shows there has been no significant release of hazardous materials or release of oil on the site. Radon testing will be done during the Schematic Design phase, so that any potential mitigation systems that are necessary can be worked into the design.

The police and fire departments presented recommendations as follows:
--Bancroft is currently the only school with one access drive to the site.
--There needs to be a separate access to the site, no matter what enrollment number the new school is built for.
--Due to the size of Bancroft Road (16-18 feet wide), a separate access should be constructed either off Holt Road or West Knoll Road; however, the police and fire department recommend West Knoll, due to restrictions created by the intersection of Holt and Stinson Roads.

Additional surveying/staking of West Knoll Road is scheduled to take place, after which the Building Committee will revisit West Knoll to view the area.

Upcoming SBC Meetings

The next SBC meeting dates and times are as follows:

Wednesday, February 3rd @ 6:30 pm in the School Committee Room, 36R Bartlet Street (second floor above the Senior Center)

Wednesday, February 10th @ 8:00 am in the Selectman's Room, 3rd floor of Town Offices (note: cost estimates of the 5 remaining site options to be presented)

Wednesday, February 17th @ 8:00 am in Town Offices (note: due to this falling during school vacation week, no substantive presentations or deliberations will take place, as several SBC members will not be in attendance. This meeting will therefore be devoted to scheduling issues.)

Wednesday, February 24th @ 6:30 pm in the School Committee Room, 36R Bartlet Street (second floor above the Senior Center) (note: Traffic Consultant will be at this meeting)

Wednesday, March 3rd @ 8:00 am in the Selectman's Room, 3rd floor of Town Offices

As of now, the eight original site options have been reduced to five. The five remaining are: Option 1A, Option 1C, Option 1D, Option 2C, and Option 3. Please note that we asked to see Option 1D modified in order to show it as partially or wholly 3 stories.

Options can be viewed by clicking on the link "SMMA Community Presentations" to the right of this page.