SOUTH HADLEY — During the School Committee meeting on Sept. 19, the committee and Superintendent Mark McLaughlin reviewed and approved the Massachusetts School Building Authority Enrollment Certification.
After submitting a statement of interest for a new school building in April 2023, South Hadley was invited in MSBA’s eligibility period in December 2023, which was the first step in securing state funds for a replacement of the school building.
The last part of this current phase is the submission to MSBA of the district study enrollment certification.
McLaughlin talked about the current process and enrollment certification.
He said, “This was a pretty extensive process. It involved a lot of information that the district provided to MSBA and then a lot of information demographic and other kinds of information they sought out themselves. It was all based upon our original proposal.”
The original proposal, that has been approved, to have this project accepted into the eligibility period was to have first grade moved from Plains Elementary School to Mosier Elementary School and fifth grade move from Michael E. Smith Middle School to the new Mosier Elementary School.
McLaughlin explained, “This is so that the new Mosier school would be a one through five. All of the work that was done was to assess what would the future population of the proposed building be such that when, I say cautiously, we’re invited into the feasibility part of the program, they would know what it is they’re allocating potentially resources for.”
The study enrollment certification showed that the current grade 2-4 enrollment at Mosier Elementary School is 360 students. The estimated grades 1-5 enrollment at the new Mosier Elementary School would be 590 students.
Assistant Superintendent of Finance and Business Operations Jennifer Voyik talked about how accurate the enrollment projections are.
She said, “Part of the process that we went though over the past 270 days, there was an enrollment questionnaire that we had to go through and that included things like our currently enrollment, the past five year enrollment, we had to get building permits from the town and what has been pulled for different projects within in the town. It was a pretty extensive questionnaire that they asked to try and get a full picture of what our enrollment will look like. It is in line with where our enrollment has been so it’s pretty accurate.”
The enrollment certification is the final step in the eligibility phase in the current stage of the project and would hopefully lead to the next phase where South Hadley is invited to the feasibility phase at end of November.
The feasibility study includes a collaboration between the town and MSBA to analyze design option and costs for the renovation or reconstruction of the school. The process includes generating an initial space summary and evaluate preliminary final alternatives and recommend the most cost-effective solution.
McLaughlin explained that is where the discussion of what the new buildings needs will be.
He said, “There’s a lot of time in the feasibility part of the program where we’ll be able to talk a lot about those needs so we might for instance say we need a bigger, for lack of a better word, timeout space that might be called for by an architect, but we would say here is what we learned.”
The School Committee unanimously approved the study to be signed by McLaughlin and School Committee Chair Eric Friesner on behalf of the town and sent to the MSBA.
“It’s an exciting step forward,” McLaughlin said.
During its Sept. 24 meeting, the Select Board voted to authorize Town Administrator Lisa Wong to sign the study on behalf of the town.
