Framingham Mayor Puts the Brakes on School Roof and Solar Projects

SUMMARY FACTS

1. The Mayor claims to have no money to fund executing even approved school capital projects in a timely manner.
2. The Mayor claims to have no money to fund new school building maintenance and solar projects for FY26 and beyond.
3. Framingham Public Schools would have to double or triple its project management staff even if the project funding problem was solved, to handle the project load needed to get control of the maintenance backlog.
4. The city needs to update its school building assessed values immediately to retire the threat of added compliance enforcement and project cost increases.

In the upcoming School Committee meeting on Wednesday, September 18, 2024, the FY26 Capital Project Request for the school district will be presented, discussed and voted on. The plan is a tour de force of inaction on sorely needed school building maintenance. Specifically, there are:

1. No new school building roof replacements.
2. No new school building exterior envelope repairs.
3. No new paving/storm water projects.
4. No new ADA compliance projects.
5. No new asbestos remediation projects.

In prior annual capital project requests, these 5 types of project have dominated planning, and are the top 5 priorities of the Framingham Public Schools (FPS).

Not this time around.

Further, the glimmer of hope, with the Farley solar roof design being funded, has now been firmly extinguished. Following strong pressure applied by the community in recent months, including by Energize Framingham, the Mayor had conceded that solar projects bring in substantial utility savings and should be funded. However, now there is zero action on funding the Farley solar roof installation, and no new solar roof or canopy projects, even though the new roof at Dunning was completed this summer and a new roof at McCarthy will be completed next summer.

It is confounding to see such an about face by the Mayor on solar installations when both the financial and environmental benefits are so abundantly obvious. The Energize Framingham folks must be pulling their hair out with frustration.

To provide the stark specifics of this devastatingly bad FY26 Capital Project Request, here is the complete request:

The first item is simply to complete a required feasibility study for the planned new southside school. The second is for needed safety upgrades, but as explained by Lincoln Lynch, Executive Director of Finance & Operations, these upgrades, originally part of the FY25 Framingham Public School operating budget, were cut when the Mayor reduced available funding for the school district budget in FY25. The safety upgrades are unfunded FY25 operating budget items moved into the capital budget for the following year: FY26.

The upshot is that none of the usual bona fide FPS capital projects are included in the FPS FY26 Capital Project Request.

This means that the entire acceleration of the school building maintenance effort has collapsed, along with what was hoped to be a developing effort to install solar panels on each new school roof.

Especially the grinding to a halt of the roof replacement effort is remarkable.

The parlous state of Framingham school roofs was discussed in prior article on April 5, 2023.

Deferred School Roof Work Costs Framingham Taxpayers a Pretty Penny

and the key report, which makes one's hair stand on end, referred to in that article is:

Annual Report on the Condition of Schools

which showed that almost all school roofs are well past their expected life, many are leaking and deteriorating faster because of that, and that replacing the 14 roofs would cost $88.6 million. Two roofs have been replaced since: Farley in 2023 and Dunning in 2024, and McCarthy is in the schedule for the summer of 2025.

At that pace, one roof/year, it would take 11 years to complete all of the remaining replacements. Clearly, way too slow a pace. The need for acceleration is obvious, but the Mayor aims to slow things down.

The Mayor was able to pay for these 3 roof replacements with $15 million in education funding he siphoned off from the school system operating budget in FY23 and FY24. The 3 roofs cost $13.9 million: Farley - $5.5 million), Dunning - $3 million, McCarthy - $5.4 million.

It’s worth recapping how he did that, as it explains why the Mayor is now claiming that he is out of money for further new roofs.

The Student Opportunity Act boosted Framingham Chapter 70 state education funding for low income, non-English speaking and special needs students by $11.8 million/year in FY23 and $16.1 million/year in FY24. That triggered the Mayor to reduce local city funding of the FPS operating budget, from its FY22 level of $89.8 million to $84.8 million in FY23 and $80.0 million/year in FY24. That way the Mayor shifted a total of $14.8 from education, over two years, to pay for school roofs.

The Mayors’ FY23, FY24 reductions in local city funding for the public schools is captured well in the following chart.

Now that the wave of increased Chapter 70 state education aid has subsided, the Mayor no longer has this mechanism to fund further new roof projects. In FY25, he had to boost local city funding of the FPS operating budget back up to $86.7 million, so he only squeezed another $3.1 million out of FPS for roofs, and in FY26 he won’t be able to squeeze anything more out of the FPS operating budget.

It should also not be forgotten that the $14.8 million which ended up funding Farley, Dunning and McCarthy roofs meant that low income, special needs and non-English speaking students had $14.8 million less support for improving their educational achievement and that to a large degree the Student Opportunity Act passed Framingham students by.

Back to roofs.

The fact that the Mayor is plum out of money for new roofs and other building maintenance is confirmed by the fact that not only has the Mayor nixed new roof replacements for FY26 planning, but he has also frozen all of the roof replacements approved in the FY25 budget along with multiple other critical building maintenance projects such as exterior envelope repairs, fire alarm upgrades and asbestos remediation.

The table, included in the meeting materials for the School Committee September 18, 2024 meeting, which conveys this astounding fact is the following:

FPS 2025-2026 Capital Projects

It shows the following projects have been frozen (denoted as TBD on the schedule):

• Potter Road school roof design and replacement
• Brophy school roof design and replacement
• Juniper Hill school roof design
• King school roof design
• King exterior envelope design and repair
• FHS exterior envelope design and repair
• Farley exterior envelope design
• Brophy asbestos remediation
• School fire alarm upgrades systemwide

This table was also front and center in discussion in two meetings of the School Committee Buildings, Grounds, Sustainability & Environment Subcommittee on August 6, 2024 and September 5, 2024, where the ‘new approach’ of funding no new real capital projects in FY26 was 'explained', and the suggestion floated that the currently funded projects will take 5 years to complete.

Now for a little context on what is going on.

I served on the School Committee from 2018-2021 and during that time was Chair of the Finance & Operations Subcommittee, privy to all of the inner workings of city financing of the school district.

The standard process each year around this time was for the Mayor and city Chief Finance Officer (CFO) to have a finance meeting with the Superintendent, the Executive Director of Finance & Operations, the School Committee Chair and the Chair of the Finance & Operations Subcommittee. That is a private meeting in which the city’s take on the financial landscape is explained by the Mayor and CFO to the FPS and School Committee leadership.

That is obviously what happened here and, with the FPS FY26 Capital Budget cut by the Mayor to $3.5 million in FY26, from $8.6 million in FY23, $14.1 million in FY24, and $18.3 million in FY25, the school district chose to fund its two top priorities: the new southside school project and student safety. Building maintenance and solar projects fell into a ditch.

The Buildings, Grounds, Sustainability and Environment Subcommittee meetings noted above, formalized those decisions into a FY26 Capital Project Request and established a number of things:

1. The school district is simply going to suck up the pain of the Mayor’s failure to support critically needed building maintenance projects and solar projects, likely because there could be much greater pain to come in the spring with the FY26 FPS operating budget.
2. If the school district is ever to get control of its more than $100 million building maintenance backlog, it will need to increase its project management staffing. Even if the projects with approved funding finally get unfrozen and scheduled, with current staffing levels, only one roof could be completed each year.
3. The assessed value of each school needs to be updated, as a doubling of roof project costs and low school property assessed values threaten to trigger major state code compliance mandates for any school with a new roof project, greatly increasing project costs.

On this last item, apparently if a school project costs more than 30% of the school building assessment, state regulations kick in to require ADA compliance and other compliances such as sprinkler systems. As an example, given by Matt Torti, Buildings & Grounds Director, the Dunning roof which was just completed cost a bit less than $3 million. He notes that the assessed value of Dunning is $9 million, compared to the estimated replacement cost of $100 million and implies that the assessed value is so low and out of date that it almost triggered the compliance requirements.

Clearly, the city needs to update its school building assessments, and this concern will disappear.

So that completes coverage of the state of play with the FPS building maintenance and solar build out planning. The facts are:

1. The Mayor claims to have no money to fund executing even approved school capital projects in a timely manner.
2. The Mayor claims to have no money to fund new school building maintenance and solar projects for FY26 and beyond.
3. Framingham Public Schools would have to double or triple its project management staff even if the project funding problem was solved, to handle the project load needed to get control of the maintenance backlog.
4. The city needs to update its school building assessed values immediately to retire the threat of added compliance enforcement and project cost increases.

Leaking roofs, which will only get worse over time, are a big problem for students and teachers, who deserve a much better teaching and learning environment, and their replacement gets more and more expensive the more they are delayed.

That is a big problem for taxpayers.

It is time for the Mayor to be straight with the community and admit that he has a severe shortage of city revenue which is distorting almost every major decision he makes.

It is also time for the Mayor to admit that he has zero interest in expanding solar roof or canopy installations in city schools.