Framingham High Underused Space Could Help Enrollment Increase

FRAMINGHAM, MA — After a demographic forecasting report predicted student enrollment in Framingham Public Schools would increase by 983 between 2014 and 2028, the district has taken action in finding way to efficiently utilize the space they have. An architect from TBA architects told the School Committee the high school has underused space that could help with the influx.

Architect Justin Humphreys suggested having teachers work in collaborative office spaces instead of their own separate classrooms as a way to free up more space. At Wednesday night's School Committee meeting, Humphreys presented a study on how to utilize the high school space to accommodate an expected influx of students. School Committee member Geoffrey Epstein described the influx as a bubble the district needs to get through, since the forecasted uptick should taper out after 2028.

Humphreys found that much of the underused space in the high school was in the far corners of the school, including in the district IT spaces. Much of this space is not close to where students have core classes so making it into classrooms isn't effective — Humphreys said the travel time between core classes and potential classes in the underused space would be too long.

Instead, he suggested 'de-coupling' teachers from their classrooms and creating a collaborative faculty work space in the underused sections of the building. "By doing that, it’s helpful to have them somewhat adjacent to where the classrooms are that they might be assigned to. But with how the students use the school, it’s less of an impact to have the faculty spaces separated from the classrooms than to have a few classrooms be far away from the core classroom areas," said Humphreys.

Director of buildings and grounds, Matthew Torti said changes wouldn't come into play immediately.

Superintendent Robert Tremblay made the point that the suggested change would stray away from the norm and would require careful and thoughtful execution on the part of the School Department.

"The biggest change I would envision in all of this is the idea that teachers would lose the ‘this is my class," Tremblay said, adding that the collaborative offices have proven to be useful in other countries and offer a venue for teachers to work together. "That allows us to use more efficiently the class as an occupied space for students, period after period, as teachers would move," he said.

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