Wilmington Officials Taking First Steps Towards New High School

Many involved with the Wilmington school community have voiced their hope for the future – they want a new high school. Whether the community at large hears that request still remains to be seen.

School officials believe the time is now to develop a plan to build a new high school. During the , the large majority of participants commented that the town needs a new school.

In recent months, the town has taken the initial steps towards proposing a new school to the town. Ideally, town officials would like to organize a special town meeting to approve funding for a new school by the end of the year, but several things need to be accomplished before that.

“The plan is to bring the vote to the town when we were confident we have the right option and all the answers to the community,” said Town Manager Michael Caira. “That includes everything from what it would look like to why, what it would cost and what it would mean to the community.”

One of the items that the town must complete is proving the community as a whole would support the new school if it were brought to a vote.

A big step in that process comes on April 12 at 6:30 p.m. in the auditorium. That night the High School Building Committee hosts a public forum and will field questions and ideas from the public.

Superintendent of Schools Joanne Benton said the time is now to execute plans for a new high school. Through the Massachusetts School Building Authority, the town is guaranteed 48.47 percent reimbursement on the project and could receive further credits that would bring the total to about 50 percent.

“In my opinion, we won’t have an opportunity like this for a long time,” said Benton. “Over the last five years it has been clear that the educational program we want to provide is not able to be carried out completely in the building we have now.”

Benton said the school, which was built in 1950, hosted 1,500 students 20 years ago. There are only 960 students now, but the superintendent said the difference is there were no specialized programs at that time.

Some of the issues in the current school are that there’s not enough room for the strings and band students to practice, science labs are outdated and teachers’ rooms are now taken over for classroom space.

“We need to look at a 21^st century building in order to teach a 21^st century curriculum,” said Benton.

The feasibility study, let by a contracted design team, looks at several options. Posted on the school’s website are a plethora of options, though none are set in stone.

Another option would be renovation, but school officials have found in the past that can actually be more costly than building new. They suspect that may be the case under the current circumstances.

 After the current preliminary stage of gathering options and figuring out the ideal choice, the Town Manager said the next step would be to go to the MSBA and seek their concurrence.

If the MSBA concurs, the next phase would be to go into the scematic designs and come up with the specific cost estimates and make a plan to go forward with. Next, officials would have to seek MSBA approval of the plan before finally going to a Special Town Meeting for a vote. Benton and Caira both said that vote would ideally come in late fall.

“This process means that we are going to continue to move forward and try to identify the best option for the community, particularly with the student in mind,” said Caira. “It would benefit the entire community. We have a good building that is now tired and outdated and can no longer function the way it should function programmatically. So we are in the process of exploring the best options to help us solve the problem.”