CCHS Building Committee to Host Community Forum Wednesday at CCHS

The Concord-Carlisle High School Building Committee has agreed to host a community forum this Wednesday night at the .

That move comes after a series of meetings at which residents raised communication as a chief area of concern around the project, which has also seen the Massachusetts School Building Authority suspend grant payments to the district as projections escalated over budget and beyond the approved scope.

The building committee voted unanimously last week to host a forum at which residents can ask questions and make comments about the newest design plans for the approximately $92 million high school building before school officials submit those plans to the MSBA, which has not yet restored funding for the project. District officials will also meet with the MSBA Facilities Assessment Subcommittee to discuss the plans and outline a plan for dealing with concerns.

Those are among the concerns the MSBA laid out during an Aug. 10 phone call with school officials and which Superintendent of Schools Diana Rigby shared with the committee and during last Tuesday’s meeting. 

The state wants to make certain that what the district is submitting for design development reaches the educational program, and it’s the same project the MSBA Board of Directors and voters from Concord and Carlisle have previously approved, Rigby said.

As the district hopes those processes allay the state’s issues with the project, this Wednesday’s public forum – which could be the first of many – is meant to address concerns from closer to home.

During Tuesday’s meeting, residents who filled the seating available inside the high school’s library said they are not against the project but have questions about the process and hope the public forum is not a pacifier.

In response, members of the building committee and School Committees, which were also in session last Tuesday, voted the forthcoming public forum was “not for show” and encouraged the communities to keep their eyes on the prize.

“What we are engaged in here are complex decisions about an educational facility that is going to be designed to better educate our kids for the next 50 years,” said committee member Phil Benincasa.

He also said mistakes have been made, but not with malice, and the constituencies must be more careful about how they speak to and treat each other.

“This community is on edge,” Benincasa said. “When the vote passed this community was as high as a kite, and we have lost some of that.”