After Five Near Misses, Will Stoneham High Make the Cut?

Stoneham School Superintendent John Macero says he’ll have a secret code. It could be a word, a phrase, or maybe after five years of falling short it will be a loud from-the-heart scream heard from Spot Pond to Bear Hill.

“I will stay calm on the phone, but when I get off that phone, you'll hear a cheer,” said Macero of the call from the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA). “I'll call Donna and she'll know. We'll have a code.”

Sometime this week, Macero expects to hear from the MSBA. After five failed attempts at securing MSBA funding for a new high school, is this the year? If the news is good, Macero will call Donna Cargill and the Stoneham High School principal will hear the code word. Or maybe she’ll just hear a loud yell, coming from an office somewhere down the hall.

"Inside I'll be jumping for joy," said Macero,of a call he knows is coming, even if it doesn’t guarantee good news. "I'll stay calm, cool, and collected as I did last year. When the executive director calls you, you're thinking hey, why would they call you. She was very nice, Diane Sullivan, and she just said unfortunately you weren't selected [last] year. Inside me, ugggghhh, crushed. And now I have to go out and tell everybody that. It would be the opposite.”

Stoneham will get a new high school, regardless of what the MSBA decides. The only question is when and who will pay for it. Stoneham hopes a cost that could approach $120 million will be shared by the state and thus the sixth application to the MSBA. But the clock is ticking and no one knows that better than Cargill, the high school principal since 2010.

A graduate of Regis College with a masters from Salem State, Cargill looks ahead to what she hopes is good news. She also looks back at the past five attempts when Stoneham came up short.

"Each time you think, well why not,” said Cargill. “We've been very persistent in expressing the need for a new school. Every time we're denied I just think, oh, there goes another group of students who aren't going to have an opportunity of a new building.”

The MSBA Selection Committee, a sub-committee of the full board, has been reviewing applicants throughout the state. They recommend which schools receive MSBA funding and then present those recommendations to the MSBA Board. The full board historically approves the Selection Committee choices. If Stoneham makes the cut, the full board will want Macero at its meeting in Boston, Dec. 12.

"I hope to be at 40 Broad Street on the ninth floor," said Macero.

Case for a new HS

It can be dangerous to make sweeping statements but in this case it’s safe. Everyone agrees that Stoneham needs a new high school.

“We need a 21st century building,” said Macero, a Saugus High and BU graduate. “We need to have a building that allows our kids to be able to learn the same way other kids from other communities are able to learn.”

Anyone who owns an older home can appreciate what Cargill and Macero are facing. The building opened in the fall of 1968 as a junior high school. It was a junior high until 1981 according to Cargill, then was converted to a four-year high school.

"I think back to some years when we had some very difficult years in terms of our school budget,” said Cargill. “We just didn't have adequate resources and I can remember when there were thermostats that had to be duct taped to the wall in order to maintain it and that's what we did.”

“We also have heating issues,” added Macero. “We have an upstairs that will stay 100 degrees whether it's the middle of the summer or the middle of the winter. There's multiple stuff.”

Macero and Cargill are trying, a fact even the MSBA acknowledged on a site visit.

“Even MSBA last year when they came to visit us said, you have an old building,” said Macero. “You have a tired building. But you have a clean building. And they congratulated us on that. We don't use that as a reason to, 'oh it's old so we don't need to take care of it.' We take care of our building.”

But there’s only so much they can do.

The New England Association of Secondary Schools and Colleges issued an accreditation report in 2017 and Stoneham High received some bad, but not unexpected news.

“The last report that came out, the only thing we were placed on warning for was the building,” said Macero. “They said your building is restricting you. It's restricting your teachers and kids from the things that you should be able to do when it comes to curriculum.”

Cargill wasn’t surprised.

"They didn't tell us things that we didn't know living here every day."

That warning actually helps with Stoneham’s pending application to the MSBA.

“When I say in some ways it's a benefit to us, because MSBA, when you put in a proposal one of the things they ask is, is your building on a warning from an accreditation,” said Macero. “We were actually able to click that button this year, to say yes, and I actually think that will help us."

Aside from duct tape and an overzealous heating system, there are plenty of other reasons supporting a new high school, including classroom size and safety concerns. The Middle School, built with MSBA help and completed in 2015, has an impressive STEM program. But when students arrive at the high school, the continuation of that program is a struggle.

“Our science, technology, engineering space, were not designed for that,” said Macero. “Who would have thought it should be designed for that in 1968 when they built this? But today when they build new schools they don't build schools with the old school philosophy. They build it toward the innovations of today's world.

“The Middle School has that whole Project Lead The Way. Because of the way they built it, it's a very successful program. Now the kids come up here and we're continuing it as best we can but we don't have the space.”

Cargill knows to look before walking down the hallway of her school. You never know what you might see.

“There are times when our physics students have to go to the hallway to do labs because the classroom does not have a large enough space for them to allow, say a car that they're making to get the right velocity to test it. We make it work, but a teacher shouldn't have to be that creative and have to spend the time worrying about how to make that happen.”

Countdown is on

Roughly 70 schools applied to the MSBA for assistance this year and that number is down to about 40 according to Macero. Stoneham has made the first cut before so no one is getting excited just yet. The MSBA funds come from the state sales tax. The funds are like a pie which the MSBA cuts into pieces for each school it approves. Macero expects that 16-17 schools will be approved this month. Last year the MSBA went with fewer schools because it selected three vocational schools, one of which was Northeast Regional in Wakefield. Stoneham just wants a piece of that pie.

"I think Stoneham is ready," said Macero. "They're ready, they want it. We want it. Our kids want it. But more importantly, our community wants it."

The call is just days away.

Photo of Stoneham School Superintendent John Macero at Town Day by Bob Holmes