'When It Really Gets Exciting': New Peabody High School Project Nears Next Phase

PEABODY, MA — Students, families and residents are invited to share their thoughts and visions for the proposed new Peabody Veterans Memorial High School at a public forum this week at the current high school.

After years of unsuccessful attempts, the city was accepted into the Massachusetts School Building Authority's programs to provide matching funds for a new high school late in 2023.

• 'A Monumental Step': Peabody High Gets State Funding Approval

The multi-year process has begun with the selection of a High School Building Committee, which will be hosting the forum on Wednesday at 7 p.m. The night will include an explanation of the MSBA construction process and a brief Q&A session.

"I am going to say it's going to be brief because we don't know everything at the moment," School Committee member Beverley Griffin Dunne said. "But there are a lot of pieces of this that people are really interested in and they want to know what's happening. So this is one of our outreach efforts to make sure that people have that opportunity to talk to the people who are actually working with this, and we can give them some information about where we go from here."

Superintendent Josh Vadala said the district has met all of its documentation obligations for the initial round of the MSBA process with the next part bringing to the School Committee a recommendation asking the City Council to appropriate funding for a feasibility study.

"That's when it really gets exciting," Vadala told the School Committee last week. "Because that's when we start looking at the site, and the design, and the different aspects of where the building might be. Then we'll hire an (Owners' Project Manager). So that's when it really picks up."

He said he anticipates that happening in early spring into the summer and that it will be a "year-and-a-half to two-year process" to determine a final design and site plan.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, arblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. X/Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)