Neighbor News
Mike McGourty's Public Works Presentation on Hollis Elementary
Mike McGourty - Braintree's Director of Public Works gave an overview of the school building assessment on September 16th, 2024
Mike McGourty, Director of Public Works gave an overview of the school building assessment on September 16th, 2024, School Committee meeting. Each of the town’s 11 school buildings was given a rating. Number 1, and highest rated was the New South Middle school, number 11 and lowest rated was Hollis.
Breaking out each of the updates on each school let’s start with Hollis.
- Exterior windows need to be replaced
- Walkways and drop-off area need to be repaired
- Phrased asbestos abatement projects will continue into the foreseeable future
- Classrooms need updating, especially in the original section of the building
- Outdated electrical service main panel, subpanel and wiring needs to be replaced to support and future HVAC upgrades
- One steam boiler and piping system needs to be replaced. Requires constant monitoring and repairs to keep the system operational
The whole district has structural issues across the buildings, but Hollis represents most of the bigger issues for the buildings. One positive note, Hollis does have a new roof in 2023. Though I do wonder if the slate roof was replaced. Highlands’ roof was replaced but the slate roof wasn’t, and slates are still falling off onto the new roof. If a parent could take pictures of the Hollis slate roof to see if any slates are falling off that would be great.
Find out what's happening in Braintreefor free with the latest updates from Patch.
Here's the video: https://www.youtube.com/live/6c-ad6BGZIE
Tell the school committee they need to do the following.
Find out what's happening in Braintreefor free with the latest updates from Patch.
1. Report on every problem in the schools, with a break down of the costs to fix. We don’t need to have this done quickly but put together a plan for this information.
2. Build a live update of the school maintenance, state of capital expenditures, situation on problems with buildings and costs. Other schools can provide this. We can too.
3. A long-term plan for how we are going to incrementally improve things. We don't expect everything to get done overnight. But let’s understand where we are today and what’s possible.
Ask the school committee today.
