PHOTOS: Topping Off a New Estabrook School

Exciting news out of Estabrook School, where the design team dropped its final, ceremonial framework beam before an eager audience earlier this week.

According to an announcement from Regan Communications, the topping off ceremony was attended by hundreds of students and residents, who watched the final beam hoisted up and secured into the framework. Estabrook students reportedly had he chance to sign the final beam before it was put in place.

Shawmut Design and Construction was the construction company selected to build the new Estabrook Elementary School in the fall of 2012. And this latest ceremony comes just a few months after an October groundbreaking ceremony, which marked the ceremonial start of the building project.

The groudbreaking came roughly two years after the discovery of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in the current building just before the start of the 2010-2011 school year.

At a special Town Meeting and then again at the polls, Lexington voters twice last year approved funding for the $40 million-plus Estabrook school building, for which the MSBA is expected to reimburse the town at about 37 percent of the project cost.