Clapp School Lease Proposal To Be Discussed Monday

The School Committee, at a meeting this coming Monday, Feb. 28, plans to review a at the to the SEEM special education collaborative after the school closes the end of this school year in anticipation of the new Goodyear School opening this summer.

No details on the proposal were available to Woburn Patch Friday.

But “further legal action is anticipated” on behalf of a group of residents of the Clapp School neighborhood, the group’s attorney, Frank Mondano, of Balliro & Mondano in Boston said Friday morning.

Representing members of the South End Neighborhood Association, Mondano contends that under a home rule petition passed into law this past spring, the building can only be used by the Woburn school department and not for a “commercial purpose.”

A law cannot, by statute, be construed to make it meaningless, Mondano said Friday—such as the interpretation that the building can be leased to a non-Woburn school department entity. Mondano said he is researching other legal issues related to the future use of the Clapp School. He will have answers “soon,” he said.

The School Committee contends that the city will need the Clapp School as swing space when elementary schools are refurbished or rebuilt in a number of years.

In the meantime, committee members say renting the building is wise.

The city solicitor and School Committee attorney have said the committee may rent the Clapp School, particularly to an educational organization. The city solicitor is John McElhiney; the School Committee attorney, Edward F. Lenox, Jr., of the law firm of Murphy, Hesse, Toomey & Lehane, LLP.

The group of South End neighbors argue that the city is breaking a promise to the neighborhood over the use of the Clapp School once the new Goodyear School opens.

Renting the Clapp School was “never the intent of our original understanding and agreement with all the parties who were affected by the substantial inconvenience of building the new Goodyear School,” former Mayor Thomas McLaughlin wrote last month.

Students who would have attended the old Goodyear School are being housed at the Clapp School while the new Goodyear is being built.

“We sought a clear compromise with the neighbors in the South End,” McLaughlin continued, “and we put our credibility on the line that the building would be turned back over to the city by the school committee … unless there was a major catastrophe such as a fire that damaged another school building.”

Woburn is part of the SEEM educational collaborative, which is the proposed entity the city may lease the building to.

The leases on two sites where the collaborative operates programs in Stoneham will expire in June or August, according to school Supt. Mark Donovan. Students in those programs have autism, he said. The number of students:  fewer than 50, Donovan said.

Donovan told the School Committee he was a member of the Board of Directors of the SEEM collaborative.

The committee voted 6-1 at its last meeting, on Feb. 8, that the Clapp School and property remain necessary for educational purposes.

The home rule petition stipulates that when the School Committee deems the Clapp no longer necessary for educational purposes, the property will be transferred to the Woburn Recreation Commission for recreation.

Monday’s School Committee meeting will start at 6 p.m., not 7 p.m., the usual committee starting time. The review of the lease proposal is the only item on the agenda. School Committee meetings are held in the conference room.