School Committee Approves Clapp Lease

Seven was the magic number last night—a 7-0 vote during a seven-minute meeting.

And now the is one step closer to being leased at the end of this school year to the SEEM special education collaborative.

The School Committee voted Monday night to lease the school to SEEM for three years, with two possible one-year extensions, starting this coming July 1.

The proposed lease now goes to the City Council.

Neighborhood residents promise to follow through on their challenge to leasing the building, which they contend violates a home rule petition passed this past spring. They say the building can only be used by the Woburn school department.

Rent of not less than $150,000 a year would be paid to the city, the lessor, under the proposed agreement with SEEM.

SEEM would be responsible for “all maintenance and ordinary repairs” to the building. The cost of structural repairs, including the roof, walls and heat, ventilation and air conditioning, would be shared equally by the city and the collaborative.

The lease caps the number of children to be involved in the program at 80, up from 50, the number of students that Supt. Mark Donovan recently told the committee were involved in two collaborative programs in Stoneham. The leases for those two sites end soon, Donovan said then. The number of students is still 50, he said Tuesday; the 80 figure is a maximum cap.

The School Committee voted 7-0 on a roll call vote in favor of the proposed lease. The meeting lasted about seven minutes. Donovan read the proposed agreement, which covers six main areas, including the lease term, rent, lessee responsibilities and premises.

SEEM would have the right to use the field adjacent to the school in common with the general public.

The committee also voted by voice to ask Mayor Scott Galvin to have the money from the rental available for the school department to maintain the school building.

The committee wants to use the Clapp School as “swing space” when other elementary schools are rebuilt in about five years.

Before the votes, School Committee member Dr. John Wells asked whether the rent would be adequate to maintain the building.

That would be hard to determine, replied school department Assistant Superintendent for Finance and Operations Joseph Elia, based on what the school department pays, because its budget is limited.

If the school department maintains the school, “We would pay 100 percent of the cost” of structural repairs, said Donovan. If the school were leased to SEEM, the school department would pay half, he said.

SEEM also has to approve the proposed lease, commented committee Chairman Patricia Chisholm.

Resident reaction

A group of about 15 people, most residents of the Clapp School neighborhood, attended the meeting.

Denise Caprio of the South End Neighborhood Association, criticized the committee’s action.

“They went back on their word [by voting to lease the school]," she said after the meeting. The neighborhood group contends that when the new Goodyear School opens this coming summer and students are redistricted out of the Clapp School, the Hudson Street building can only be used by the Woburn school department, and only in an emergency. Ultimately, when the School Committee deems the school unnecessary for educational purposes, the home rule petition stipulates that the school property will be used for recreation. The committee voted at a recent meeting that the school is still needed.

Further, the School Committee doesn’t know if there will be money for a new school in several years, Caprio said.

Several people raised the issue of traffic and congestion at and around the school.

One area resident who attended his first meeting Tuesday on this contentious subject had this to say.

“My recollection that the reason the Clapp (School) is being vacated is because the Goodyear (School) is opening, and the (Clapp) site was to be open for all to enjoy,” said Michael Dudal of Woburn Park Way. “The mayor and the school committee appear to ‘slam dunk’ this through.”

Looking back at the legalities

In late January, School Committee member Joseph Crowley, chairman of the School Committee’s Resource Subcommittee, suggested that the subcommittee recommend that the full committee solicit bids to rent the Clapp School.

Since then, City Solicitor John McElhiney and School Committee Attorney Edward F. Lenox, Jr., of the law firm of Murphy, Hesse, Toomey & Lehane, LLP, both submitted letters to the School Committee saying the Clapp School could be rented.

If the building was rented to the SEEM collaborative, Lenox wrote, “this would so clearly be an ‘educational purpose’ as to significantly increase the city’s chances of prevailing should there be a legal challenge to the rental.”

Further, the school could be leased to SEEM without having to seek public bids, Lenox wrote, because an educational collaborative is an “instrumentality” of the cities and towns that are members of the collaborative. Woburn is a member of SEEM.