Pittsfield School Building Needs Starts Convo On Next Steps
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — Superintendent Jason McCandless believes Conte, Morningside, and Crosby should be linchpins in deciding what will be the next school capital project.
Conte and Morningside both have 1970s-style open plan classrooms, an outdated style of education McCandless said has a number of drawbacks. Those two also have had little in terms of capital projects in the last 40 or so years with Conte receiving a renovation in 1974 and Morningside the following year.
"That was an idea whose time came in the '70s and like many things in the '70s, went in the '70s," McCandless said of the open-plan classrooms.
Crosby had previously been the city's No. 1 target for renovation but never moved forward. McCandless said that school has been largely untouched since 1962 other than maintenance.
Further, the three schools have the highest percentages of low-income students and have been ranking toward the bottom in the state's accountability standards.
"Crosby and Conte are remaining firmly in the sights of the commonwealth," McCandless said of the accountability data.
McCandless said the Massachusetts School Building Authority and a former city maintenance director have ranked those schools as being in the worst physical condition. The superintendent believes that those issues should be addressed first.
However, City Councilor John Krol, who filed a petition that prompted the conversation, believes addressing the elementary schools hasn't been the expectation. The city just completed a $120.8 million renovation of Taconic High School and addressing the aging Pittsfield High School was believed to be next.
"I do feel it is important to acknowledge that this is a change in the direction we have articulated to the community for more than a decade. Many times it was stated and accepted that the project at Taconic High School would be followed up by a renovation of Pittsfield High School. If we are not doing that, the public deserve us to articulate it clearly," Krol, who was unable to attend Monday's meeting, wrote in a letter to the School Building Needs Commission.
Krol filed a petition calling for a plan for the future of Pittsfield High School, which led to Monday's discussion.
The concept of consolidating into one high school was hotly debated more than a decade ago and ultimately the decision was to renovate both separately. The city submitted a statement of interest in 2005 to get funding for multiple schools at once — Crosby Elementary School, Taconic High School, and Pittsfield High School.
The state rejected the Crosby application and later made the city choose between Taconic and Pittsfield, with city officials chosing the former. The new Taconic opened for its first year and with a dropping student enrollment districtwide, the question remains what to do with the remaining schools and what capital repairs should be undertaken.
Krol is particularly interested in how to use the Crosby campus for not only Pittsfield but for the wider region.
"I hope that the commission will think creatively and innovatively about how we can utilize the Crosby campus for Pittsfield and for the wider region, such as a regional pre-K center, and/or a flagship for a new model for elementary education (K-6th grade) or other concepts that would be consistent with best practices and the regionwide challenges explored by the county's educational task force," Krol said.
Krol was referring the collective body of educators who have spent the last few years re-thinking how education is delivered locally. With the shrinking population, the Berkshire County Educational Task Force believes there needs to be fewer isolated districts and more regionalization — thus reducing the percent of costs for administration and offering new ways to deliver a larger spectrum of programming.
The task force found that as enrollment shrinks throughout the county, individual districts are scaling back programming to meet budgets. A larger regional model would help create the pool of students needed to provide enough interest in various programs to keep them more robust.
McCandless said countywide the district is down by about 10,000 students from 15 years ago and Pittsfield dropped by about 1,500.
The School Building Needs Commission didn't touch that issue in depth on Monday. Instead the group that, which had not met in a while, determined that it would start with information gathering and then renew efforts to plan for the future.
Member Patrick Mele put the responsibility for the first step on the School Committee, City Council, and city administration to develop an educational plan the commission can coalesce around.
"We are just the bricks and mortar pieces of it, not necessarily the educational piece," he said.
Mayor Linda Tyer asked if the MSBA would fund multiple school projects at once to which Skanska USA Project Manager Jim Moran responded, yes, and that it would likely be more cost effective to do so because of economies of scale. The multiple projects could only have one architect and one builder, he said, thus reducing expenses.
There are multiple moving pieces going into the city's educational future. McCandless said there are four top options for the city to consider capital-wise: to do nothing right now because of the number of large capital projects the city has recently taken on, to focus on getting rid of the two open classrooms, to focus on PHS,or to focus on Crosby.
For consolidation, the decisions need various considerations. Taconic right now isn't big enough to have students from both schools. Reid and Herberg has population levels stable and also could not be consolidated. And the elementary schools have various population levels and building conditions. Meanwhile, Crosby is deeded to remain a school.
"Can we fit 9-12 in this building in a decade? I don't know. We have a decent guess via the Berkshire Regional Planning Commission, but these are the things the School Committee will be taking on," McCandless said of the high schools.
One concept kicked around was to turn Taconic into a 10-12 high school and make the middle schools academies. However, McCandless said that becomes challenging because of the vocational program — the state wants those as four-year programs.
"We have to make some good plans based on some sort of consolidation," said School Committee Chairwoman Katherine Yon.
The city won't be able to get a statement of interest in for a capital project this year but city officials say they do need to take a closer look at what is to come.
"There is a lot of information and legwork that we need as a commission to decide what the next project will be," said School Building Needs Commission Chairwoman Kathleen Amuso.
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