001hi everyone it's Mike Morris superintendent thanks for joining me on just what a Nutty uh week what a Nutty day um I want to start obviously the topic today is about a building project uh but I want to start by thanking everyone for all the work you're doing and and how hard it is to be an educator in this moment and processing everything that has occurred for your own self um we people first uh as well as taking care of kids especially Elementary age kids in the climate we're in so I'd be remiss if I didn't start by uh acknowledging how challenging how painful it's been over the last 24 hours certainly I share that and you know hopefully the support that you know I know principals met with all offered a meeting for all
002the schools before school today I know some people have to run to one that's in 15 minutes I'll try to be uh pretty quick with this um but I I just wanted to um wanted to bring up that and and start that way uh if you haven't been on one of these before um we just figured this would be a good setting because it automatically records and this link you could share with anybody uh who wants to see it who wasn't able to come today uh but if you have any questions or comments throughout on the lower right hand corner you should see a little um box um I think it says say something uh in light font and you can type in any questions or comments but want to take this opportunity um to
003talk about where we are with the elementary building project um and share a little bit of that so I'm going to share my screen hopefully uh effectively um there we are uh if you're on a computer there should be if you hover over the screen at the bottom right hand corner there should be a way to maximize a screen if any of the font ends up getting small but um we're part of the msba program the msba is the Massachusetts school building authority they uh fund projects across the Commonwealth uh essentially they fund about in our community would be about 50% of the cost of a project um all of these projects are in the dozens of millions of dollars so they're a very helpful fund agent they also set a very clear uh approach
004and formula because they have to be fair to all the communities they serve um we did apply a couple years ago we didn't get in and then we got in uh for Fort River School and where we are in the process I'm going to click forward to slide um is we're in this eligibility period you see over here uh so essentially we we submitted an application called a statement of interest uh in that statement of interest for those of you who weren't part of the district then uh we engage the community the larger Community the staff uh and one of the commitments we made was that any new school would be no greater than 600 students there was a lot of concerns from a prior project that did not go through about the size of
005the school and there was Community consensus on that uh when we were doing this couple years ago um so we're at the tail end of the eligibility period um this is the building process is a town and school process um and really what I want to tell you is where uh because the MSB ba again who's funding and supporting the project they've made some decisions on the enrollments we are basically what we're allowed to study uh not what the decision is in the end but what we're allowed to study and wanted to get out in front of that I want people to know that nothing uh like the best case scenario of completing the project uh would be four years from now or four years from this fall upcoming fall the fall of 2025 that
006would be the best case scenario so we're letting you know ahead of time because this is a defining moment the the couple options we have to study not because any of these changes will happen anytime soon but we want to make sure that we're keeping everyone in our community our staff members informed uh of what's happening and so this is the full process I won't take the time to go through all of it we're here uh this is the part that's about four four and a half years away in the best case scenario if the community come to together to come up with some decisions uh relatively quickly uh these phases coming up are really hiring owner project manager architect uh doing a feasibility study where there'll be lots of forums including for staff and
007schematic design um so we're we're well away from making any formal decisions at least the year uh but the msba has made a decision for us and that's what I want to go over today so they they let you uh they permit you to study only a couple different options in other words you don't go into their process and are allowed to study whatever you like you submit requests um these were the three requested enrollments I submitted uh to be asked to that we be allowed to study one would be a 420 student school which is for Fort River would be projected to be if commutes goes all the way up to sixth grade um and without a consolidation so in other words this would address Fort River challenges uh with infrastructure not Wildwood I
008asked to study a 520 student option which is a k would be a k to 5 Consolidated School uh with a separate there's some the town has funded a separate uh study around Crocker Farm uh and maybe an expansion at Crocker farm that some folks in our community were interested in and lastly uh 600 student school that would be K to 5 uh with the current Fort River and wildwood buildings being vacated I know a question I'm getting a lot in the last couple days is why not K to6 Consolidated School and again it comes back to the fact that a couple years ago when we engaged the community uh we put it out and people felt comfortable you know going up towards 600 students and they really didn't feel comfortable going Beyond 600 students
009and for a k to6 solidated school that would be over students so these were what were requested uh but not what was approved by msba by the state they only approved two options for us you know one is a k to6 option at Fort River School for 320 students and that would uh what that would look like is they would maintain having three elementary schools in the ammer for the ammer Public Schools elementary schools in ammer it would involve us having some conversations of of the structure of Fort River given the kantes program uh and the monolingual program that are in in place in K1 and going up the reason they didn't approve the larger enrollment is because we at a district level they look at the capacity and they in their opinion it would
010be overbuilding um that if we went up to 420 students there'd be excess capacity at the other schools in ammer and they don't they only build to the capacity of the district they don't look at the individual School the second enrollment that was supported was uh 500 75 students for a k to 5 School uh that would take Fort River and wildwood offline U so that result of that would be there'd be two elementary schools in the town of ammer this new school as well as Crocker Farm sixth grade students would would need to be educated at the Middle School uh and just because I know I got this question a lot even the other night at school committee there'd be roughly five classes per grade level at that new school three in English and
011two from the commant program um so that's what they approved us to study and that those are the only two options we're able to study uh I think it's important to note that from the msba process this is really about what enrollments to study these other questions on here about whether sixth grade goes to the middle school and whether we change the structure of common anes all those are in that next phase of the feasibility study uh this is really just defining what the msba has approved to study at that next phase is where we'll study all of these options and come to some programmatic decisions and then the community and by Community I mean uh staff uh families uh and larger Community will have to weigh in on which of the options they prefer
012uh for us to move forward both schools are desperately in Need Fort River and wild are desperately in need of work I think it's worth noting that Crocker Farm has a lot of capital needs too and that came up at the meeting at school committee meeting on Tuesday night and I was very emphatic with the committee as as they were with me that we can't forget about Crocker farm and the infrastructure needs that have emerged over the last um now 18 years uh since that building was added to and renovated so that's that's sort of where we are the next phase would be in uh February the msba board uh hopefully approves these these have been approved by the staff at the msba and then we'll move forward uh but that's at this point these
013really this defines what we're allowed to study uh not necessarily what decision between these that we would make over time trying to be really brief given I know uh it's been uh quite a 24 48 hours for folks and I know some people are running off to a meeting at 3:30 um but I want to just open it up for any questions uh that people would have again on the bottom right hand corner of your screen there's there should be a way for people to submit questions uh or concerns or anything else you want to tell me about um this um you know something as I'm giving you time to to type in any comments or questions just want to acknowledge and apologize for the condition of our buildings um you know I started as
014a teacher at Fort River I was an intern at a teacher at Fort River in 2000 and uh it wasn't great building then and 2021 years later it's still not a good building and and um not something that we would want um for our kids for our staff our community and this is really the first step to addressing at least one of the two buildings that are in significant need in our community so I'll give it a little bit of time um to see if anyone has any questions uh that they'd like to ask uh about where we are with the process and what next steps there would be I'll also say and I'll put this in there as well uh if people are more comfortable um connecting with me via email uh I think
015people get enough emails from me but I'll still put it in there that people are feel should feel welcome to uh you know shoot me an email if that's more comfortable for uh for you to communicate uh that way with me give it another minute see if anyone has any questions [Music] okay not seeing any questions I want to thank everyone for coming um I know it's it's a crazy time on and where I started thank you for all the work you're doing on behalf of students and for your colleagues in this surreal situation we find ourselves in uh please feel free to send any questions my way uh via email or set up a time to talk I'm happy to do that and I hope you have a good afternoon and I'll see everyone
016soon thank you bye-bye