We continue to pursue the construction of a new consolidated elementary school building on the former Line Lumber site (off Park St. near the current South School). In short, this new building will address the physical deficiencies with the current South School building, greatly help us deal with overcrowding issues in all of our elementary buildings, and allow us to provide better educational opportunities for our elementary students in a cost effective way. This project will also reduce the number of elementary schools in town from the current number of five to four as we close the South School building, close the Jones School building, and repurpose the Wilkins School.
I hope you can join me at a community forum about this new elementary school building project coming up on Tuesday, January 21. This is a great opportunity to hear the latest updates about the project from the Building Committee and project team, as well as ask questions. The forum will take place in the Stoughton High Auditorium at 7pm and is open to all of our families, staff, and community members. Town Meeting members are of course invited to attend.
Just a couple of weeks after the community forum, there is a special Town Meeting scheduled for Monday, February 3 where Town Meeting members will be asked to approve the funding of a new consolidated elementary school building. If this article passes, there will be a townwide election to approve funding the project this April, to coincide with Stoughton’s annual town election.
We continue to be conscious of the project’s cost and are seeking ways to either lower the cost of the project or reduce the share of the cost for taxpayers. One such example is by changing the project delivery method from a construction manager at risk to design-bid-build, we have saved $1.25 million. The Building Committee will also be filing for available benefits from available third-party funding sources, including the tax credits available from the federal Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and other state or federal funding, or other sources of project income that districts may receive for the purchase, installation, and operation of sustainable systems. In most cases, this type of funding will not lower the bottomline cost or reduce the amount of grant funding that districts receive from the MSBA, but it would help lower the amount Stoughton taxpayers will be paying for the project.
To find out more about the project, you can visit the project’s website. I also encourage you to read the report from the Elementary School Building Independent Working Group.
Hope to see you at the Community Forum on January 21.
Have a great weekend.
Sincerely,
Joseph F. Baeta, Ed.D.
Superintendent of Schools
Stoughton Public Schools
