Plan for Merging Pittsfield's Elementary Zones Tabled
PITTSFIELD, Mass.— The School Committee is not ready to adopt an elementary school reorganization plan that moves Stearns students into the proposed Crosby/Conte building.
On Wednesday, it tabled a long-term, three-zone elementary plan that assumes the Stearns population will be a part of a new school on West Street as early as 2029.
The city has to determine the building's size, based on enrollments, in its quest for funding from the Massachusetts School Building Authority. Officials say the MSBA also wants to see how the consolidation of the West Side fits into larger plans for the district.
Based on the attendance map, the Lebanon Avenue school is an outlier and would be absorbed into the new building, which drew some concern.
"I need time to absorb this and work on it," Vice Chair Daniel Elias said.
"We've had a lot of discussions. We've had a lot of meetings, and although these zones have been there, there never has been the immediate pressing nature of Stearns going goodbye, and so I think there needs to be an absorption period and a lot of dialogue before we get to that."
An enrollment review is required to move forward with a feasibility study, Superintendent Latifah Phillips reported. This means that the city has to agree with the Massachusetts School Building Authority on the size of the building.
She displayed a vision for a lower and upper elementary building with shared facilities from the 2023 school master plan, and a map that condenses eight elementary attendance zones into three: the West Side, the North Side, and the East Side.
This is expected to run until 2046, and the images have been shared over the last couple of years during district restructuring outreach. The District Master Plan stages the Pittsfield High School renovation for 2029-2036, the Northside School project from 2033-2040, and the Eastside School project from 2039 to 2046.
"When we make the decision for that building for the West Side, it is a decision for the next 20 to 30 years," Phillips said.
"And so we want to make sure that we are clear on the future vision so that we can make sure that we build the school properly to meet the needs of the community."
Chair William Cameron explained that MSBA wants to see a plan for the rest of the city if John C. Crosby Elementary and Silvio O. Conte Community School are consolidated. He emphasized that it is mapped out as a 20-year project and could be amended.
"We need to be on record as supporting this plan, because at the moment, this plan is what the Crosby/Conte project is tied into," he said. "This is the first step of a three-step project."
He doesn't think people who have paid attention to the project will be shocked by the visuals, citing the dozen public meetings that were held. The restructuring study was fueled by population decline.
"I want to emphasize this doesn't mean we're merging these schools. Period. Better plan on it, start packing your books. This is a schematic, still. It is a general plan, it's my understanding, and it doesn't mean we're planning to take your keys and you won't be able to go back to your building next year," committee member Sara Hathaway said.
"This is a very long-term plan. We don't have the money to replace all these schools, for one thing. We don't have locations to replace them. But the idea is that the state wants to know how many children are in this area, who will be attending in that area in the year 2030 or 2035."
Mayor Peter Marchetti said that "at best," they would combine the three West Side elementary schools in 2029. Without this plan, he said, they either won't get to the feasibility study or will get into it with a much smaller school and go back to the drawing board.
School Committee member William Garrity unsuccessfully moved to add "for the purposes of MSBA enrollment projections" to the motion while it was on the floor for approval.
"I just don't feel comfortable committing to something right now that could not be happening," he said.
Marchetti made the motion to table, recognizing that the MSBA needs enrollment numbers by the end of October.
"Would it be feasible for us to table this tonight, go back to MSBA with the concerns that we've heard from some of the school committee members, and see if there's a path forward?" he asked Phillips.
"Because, I mean, my understanding is, at this very moment, the size of the project depends on where this School Committee goes, or maybe the future of this project decides what happens as we go forward, and I think hearing some of the concerns, we may be not in the right place to be making that decision tonight, and I think we could go back to MSBA and have additional conversations with how strong is that commitment, or could we redesign lines later?"
She cautioned that the timeline is getting "tight," and the MSBA shared that they want concrete decisions instead of aspirations in order to support a larger building.
The School Committee meets again on September 17, "and if we don't do it at the next meeting, the project is put off for another 10 years," Cameron said.
Tags: elementary schools, Pittsfield Public Schools,
