Pittsfield Officials Tour Schools Eyed for Combined Build
PITTSFIELD, Mass. — The School Department sees an opportunity to rebuild two insufficient schools on one site with shared facilities — now it needs support from the School Committee and City Council.
Members of the School Building Needs Commission led the two bodies through Silvio O. Conte Community School and John C. Crosby Elementary School on Tuesday. A statement of interest for a new build on the Crosby site is due on April 12 with a possible determination from the Massachusetts School Building Authority by December.
"We really have what I would consider an opportunity of our lifetimes here," Superintendent Joseph Curtis said, explaining that this opportunity would make a significant investment in the education of the West Side for the first time in around 50 years.
Following approvals from the committee and the City Council, a rough timeline shows a feasibility study in 2026 with design and construction ranging from 2027 to 2029. The commission's vote is staged for March 12, the School Committee vote for the following day, and the council is expected to make a decision on March 26.
The tour began at the 69,500-square-foot Conte that opened in 1974. Located on West Union Street, it is not far from the proposed site of a new building on West Street.
"As you know, this is an open-space school. It's a school with no walls and this is a kind of a phase of education that happened in the late '60s, early '70s," Curtis said. "There are still a number of schools that remain across the commonwealth and the United States but most of them are now being replaced."
He began in the cafeteria and then led the group through the open classrooms, library, and second-floor main office. Due to the school's layout, classrooms are in quads and divided by temporary walls that do not reach the ceiling, allowing for noise to travel.
The superintendent began his career at the school 30 years ago and said instructions had to be coordinated by educators so as not to disrupt other classes.
"When you're an educator and in open-space school, you have to be very deliberate about where you plan these spaces," he explained. "When I was a teacher here, we would have to plan the layout of each one of our instructional spaces very deliberately."
Upstairs, the group gathered in Conte's main office. Curtis said it is "highly unusual" for it to be located on the second floor and that it poses security issues because it was meant to be an unlocked community space when it was built.
"The building was open and community spaces that we saw on the first floor were open for community use so the idea was that the school's main office was on the second floor," he said.
"As you can imagine, we cannot leave school buildings unlocked anymore and the design of the building and its entry certainly isn't secure."
Crosby is about 69,800 square feet and opened in 1962. It was built as a junior high school, so several aspects had to be adapted for elementary use.
"We're trying to do everything we can except for replacing the building to make the environment more conducive to learning and more friendly, welcoming," Curtis said.
He pointed out that the offices and service-provider areas are detached from the classrooms and that there is only one barrier to access the building unlike Taconic High School, where a person has to be buzzed in twice. Standing in one of the classrooms, he drew attention to the school's windows, many of which are cracked and repaired with duct tape.
"We can't have them replaced because the glazing contains asbestos," Curtis explained, adding that an abatement would be quite expensive.
Because it was built as a higher-level school, Crosby has an auditorium that cannot be included in a new elementary building project. If the district wanted to preserve the auditorium, it would be at its own cost.
After both schools were toured, attendees settled down for the 11th public forum that has been held on current district restructuring efforts. Curtis said the concept of a new building project started with a small group conversation that included former Mayor Linda Tyer and other community groups.
At the time, planners proposed tearing down the open-space schools Conte and Morningside Community School to be rebuilt in the same footprint but Curtis encouraged a larger study about the district to see if that is really what the community desires.
School attendance zones are a point of discussion for the entire school district and for this project.
Currently, eight attendance zones designate where a student will go to elementary school. Part of the vision is to collapse those zones into three with hopes of building a plan that incorporates partner schools in each attendance zone.
The West Side zone can potentially have both partner schools, Crosby and Conte, on the same site. These partner schools could share several common spaces including the gym, cafeteria library, and potential administrative offices which could result in a reduction in costs for maintenance.
This plan has the potential to house Grades prekindergarten to first grade in one school and Grades 2 to 4 in another with both having their own identities and administrations.
There is a potential for 80 percent reimbursement through the MSBA program and it projected that the cost of renovations would be similar to that of a new build and would have a lower reimbursement rate.
Crosby was identified as having the greatest opportunity for school construction, as it has a large area to build on with little disruption and yields potential for a lower and upper elementary school on the same site.
The next step after a statement of interest would be a feasibility study to determine the specific needs and parameters of the project, costing about $1.5 million and partially covered by the state.
Curtis pointed to the work that has been done in the last couple of years toward revisioning the physical and educational components of Pittsfield schools.
He explained that the MSBA will look favorably on the amount of community input that has been solicited even before the statement of interest and, if not accepted, it will have to be resubmitted next year.
Tags: MSBA, Pittsfield Public Schools,
