NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The School Building Committee was re-established on Tuesday as the panel prepares to undertake a feasibility study for Brayton and Greylock schools that may mean reconsidering how the city's elementary schools are configured.

 

The original committee for the Greylock School project dissolved in April after abandoning pursuit of a renovation of the 70-year-old school. The recommendation had come from the Massachusetts School Building Authority based on enrollment projects that show the city's school population dwindling over the next decade. The MSBA encouraged and accepted the city's application to change its project to include Brayton Elementary with the understanding that this would likely mean the closure of Greylock. 

 

The committee had reorganized enough to begin the process of hiring an owner's project manager but changes leadership after the November election lead to Tuesday's reorganization. 

 

Taking the lead now will be Mayor Jennifer Macksey, also chairman of the School Committee, who is being joined by a few new faces as well as holdovers from the original committee.

 

The committee is comprised of: Nancy Rauscher, former assistant to the superintendent and now business administrator, Superintendent Barbara Malkas, Brayton Principal Carrie Wallace, Greylock Principal Sandra Cote, North Adams Administrative Officer Angela Lopes, school Director of Facilities Robert Flaherty, Building Inspector William Meranti, School Committee members Richard Alcombright and Tara Jacobs, City Council President Lisa Blackmer, Head Start Director of Child Support Services Donna Hedding, Brayton teacher and parent William Chapman, Assistant Superintendent Kimberly Roberts-Morandi, Benjamin Lamb, early childhood educator Constance Tatro, contractor David Moresi, and Brandon Rousseau, representing the Berkshire Family YMCA. 

 

Many of the members fulfill specific requirements for the committee, such as knowledge of finances, construction, architecture and codes, educational needs, functioning of the buildings, and as parents or interested community members. After some discussion, the group considered that both Greylock and Colegrove Park schools might also have a parent and or teacher involved since any decision would affect both schools. 

 

Not all members will be voting members, however. Malkas said she and Rauscher had had conversations about whether administrators should also vote and noted that she had been a voting member on one past school project and a non-voting member on another.

 

"There's something to be said for not necessarily having school district staff be considered voting members ... We really feel very strongly that you know, we serve this School Committee and we serve the school building committee," she said. "Also, by category, we should have a consideration then is it one or both? So for example, in the School Committee member category, we have two representatives, should it be one or both?"

 

Malkas said she didn't think there was a role for her as a voting member but Rauscher disagreed. "I would say given the breadth of your responsibility that — I don't know who else from the district is going to be a voting member — but I don't think it's crazy for you to be a voting member," she said. "That's my personal opinion. ... I think it would be value added to have you be a voting member."

 

Rauscher, who is expected to regain her designation as a "Massachusetts Certified Public Purchasing Official" in a few months, would also be the chair of the OPM selection committee, said Malkas, and so should be a voting member. 

 

Macksey said she felt that Lopes should remain a member, considering what role she may play in procurement, but not as a voting member. Alcombright, who served on the original school building committee prior to his election in November, said he would be fine as an observor and defer to Jacobs as the voting member. The committee, however, voted to have both School Committee members with voting authority.

 

The final tally so far is 12 voting members: Macksey, Malkas, Rauscher, Wallace, Cote, Alcombright, Jacobs, Blackmer, Moresi, Lamb, Tatro, Chapman.

 

Malkas also reported that there has been a lot of interest in the request for services for an owner's project manager, with about 16 inquiries. Seven potential applicants with experience toured both the Brayton and Greylock schools last week, she said. The deadline for applications is this Friday afternoon and packets will be developed to go out to the OPM selection committee for review this weekend. 

 

The selection committee will be provided a score sheet to rank the candidates based on criteria already approved by it and the school building committee. Malkas anticipated meeting on Tuesday, Jan. 25, to evaluate the applications and identify the top three candidates. Both Jan. 31 and Feb. 3 have been scheduled for possible interviews, but more can be done if needed. 

 

"Our goal is to be able to submit our OPM finalist to MSBA by Feb. 4," she said. "So the next two weeks, very short timeline, but we're very close and we have some very highly qualified OPM services interested in this project."

 

Two enrollment studies by the MSBA and the New England School Development Council had projected an enrollment 10 years out off about 625 students in Grades kindergarten through 6. Brayton and Colegrove Park currently have a capacity for 716. But it may not be as easy as closing a school, Malkas said. 

 

The superintendent also provided a look at how classroom size might be affected based on project numbers. The district saw a sharp decline in 2021, dropping from 1,358 students to 1,223, but this year has rebounded slightly to 1,257. While this drop seemed to caused in part by the pandemic, it is in line with the expected decline over the coming years.

 

"I really wanted to present this as informational to the committee because it really speaks to some of the concerns we're hearing in the community, but also some of the considerations that we will need to have as we move forward into feasibility," she said. "Prior to COVID, we really looked at a classroom size of 24 as being really a maximum capacity classroom. With COVID, some of those maximum capacities are less on average, it's 22 students but in some classrooms it's actually lower than that."

 

Using enrollment data from Dec. 1,  she showed that the average classroom size across six sections (two sections per grade per school with three schools), average class sizes have tended to be lower than the maxium capacity (with the caveat that there has been "volatility" in enrollment because of the pandemic) though some are "bumping up" to the max.

 

Reducing the number of sections to five would still keep the average below 22 students but dropping to four (two sections per grade with two schools) would exceed that. 

 

"So closing a school in our current grade configuration, in our current model, just saying all right, we're just going to close Greylock and assume all of those students can be then brought into Brayton, that isn't going to actually work because we're going to have increased class sizes at Brayton that would exceed our classroom capacities," Malkas said. "That means that as we move forward, we're going to have to really think outside the box a little bit."

 

One option is to reconfigure so that the grades are not split between schools. Malkas put forth the idea of six sections of early childhood (prekindergarten and kindergarten), five sections of lower elementary (1-3) and four sections of upper elementary (4-6). MSBA and New England School Development Council, which did an enrollment study several years ago, both suggested the idea of grade spans.

 

"I think when we start to talk about equity across the school district this is actually a really interesting model tackling that issue," said Lamb. "I know the conversations when you have like, oh, they came from this school or that school. Instead, they're coming from a central school. ... I really I do like that component of it. I actually am looking forward to digging into a bunch of research on this now because I think it's an interesting model."

 

Thomas Simon, director of student support services, said grade spans could allow for programs to be housed with specific grades and would eliminate the need for some children to be transported between schools to meet their needs. 

 

Jacobs thought the ability to service students by age and where their needs were developmentally in one place was an exciting possibility but she was concerned at how other elements of the schools, such as playgrounds, would be addressed based on ages. If the project was at Brayton, would there be money to meet the changed needs at Colegrove, she asked. 

 

"That's the challenge of feasibility, right?" responded Malkas. "Because we have to start to consider different options. And while we have this view from the MSBA that we can currently house all of our students in two schools, unless we're willing to reconfigure the entire district and really think about what we might be doing there ... we can't jump into a design process until we've actually done this kind of work of what are the possibilities and what are the considerations ....

 

"This is going to really require great visioning of what we see education in the city of North Adams like as we go forward into the next 50 years."