WILBRAHAM — During its Aug. 22 meeting, the Hampden-Wilbraham Regional School Committee officially voted to move forward with conversations surrounding modifying the lease agreement between Hampden and the distric over future use and ownership of Thornton W. Burgess School.
With this decision, the School Committee will begin negotiations with the Hampden Board of Selectmen to return the school to the town by June 30, 2025.
Thornton W. Burgess School functioned as a middle school in Hampden for more than 50 years before it closed in 2017, Hampden Board of Selectmen Chair Don Davenport stated on June 18. Since its closing, the school has been utilized for specific education programs and administrative purposes yet has remained below full usage.
While the school was initially part of four options within the Hampden-Wilbraham School District’s reconfiguration plans to address issues of under and over-enrollment in schools, all options that would require Thornton W. Burgess to remain open were eliminated by the Planning Committee, Superintendent John Provost confirmed.
Additionally, the regional agreement would need to be modified in order to allow students to move to Thornton W. Burgess School, Davenport added. This is due to a requirement in the agreement for students to be educated in their hometown until high school.
Provost explained that a “realistic timeline” to empty the school was the second semester, or the middle of January 2025, in order to accommodate relocating the current staff and students there as well as the physical resources to another school in the district.
The current lease between the School Committee and the Board of Selectmen expires in 2035, Davenport said.
Concerning the question of how the district will approach the enrollment issue without use of Thornton W. Burgess School, Provost stated that the current plan was to place the district’s innovation pathways program at Minnechaug Regional High School.
“Our thinking is to move the pathways to the high school. The pathways has to include grades 9, 10, 11 and 12 and can include grade 8 so that’s why our thinking is that is the natural home for [the program],” he said. Provost also noted that the cost of bringing Thornton W. Burgess to the standard required for full school operation would be “significant.”
The innovation pathways program was first raised as one of three alternatives at the School Committee’s March 7 meeting after consensus on a district reconfiguration option was not reached at the Feb. 15 community forum.
At this meeting, Provost explained that the program would allow students to participate in career-specific courses and an internship in their desired field while in high school. With the committee’s approval, Provost pursued this program, announcing at the Aug. 22 meeting that the district was awarded $15,000 to support design of a program.
He stated that he would be acting as “a presenter and a data collector” at the upcoming middle school open house to inquire about student interest in the pathways program.
During discussion, School Committee member Timothy Collins raised concerns about how the future balance of population in the two towns would impact the district’s need for Thornton W. Burgess School.
“The number of households that have people who are 75 years or older living in those big houses has a concern for me that we’re going to see an influx of new families move into town. We already don’t have enough room in our middle school and giving up a potential school building at this point in time doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense to me,” he said.
In response, Provost agreed that the young population is expected to grow. However, he noted that this is not expected to have “real significant increases” on the enrollment due to the trend of families only having one to two children, rather than three to four children.
Collins was the only School Committee member to vote against entering negotiations with Hampden.
When Hampden regains control of Thornton W. Burgess School, the Board of Selectmen “envision[s]” that the space could become a “new Town Hall, kind of a community center for the two towns,” Davenport stated.
With the official vote, Hampden Town Administrator Brian Domina will correspond with Provost to begin the conversations.
