Why I'm voting No on the Wildwood Elementary School

I will be voting No regarding the Wildwood Elementary School. My vote is based on what is documented in the Project Scope and Budget agreement [1] between the MSBA and the town of Wilmington.

The total cost of the school is approximately $173 million. Of that, the MSBA will contribute $62 million, leaving $111 million to be paid by Wilmington taxpayers. This breakdown has been shared publicly by the Wilmington School Building Committee (WSBC). However, what hasn’t been widely discussed is that over $57 million of the local share which is labeled “ineligible” for MSBA reimbursement. Why is there so much “ineligible” costs? The simple answer is it is the size of the school. At 165,035 sq ft., it will be the largest elementary school in Massachusetts history.
The next largest is in Milford at just over 133,000 sq ft. The Milford school contains over 1000 students. The MSBA considers Milford to be an appropriate size. How is this determined? The MSBA has a simple formula. Number of students * 145 (the amount of gross square footage per elementary student) for schools with more than 600 students. Wildwood is being built for 755 students, the MSBA considers the appropriate size to be 109,475. This number can be found in many of the WSBC presentations. One place is Community Forum #2 [3] Slide 33.

The cost of the school is directly proportional to the size of the school.

Let’s do the math:

$173 million = 165,035 sq. ft. (size of school) * $1050 sq. ft. vs
$58 million = 55,560 sq. ft. (size ineligible for MSBA funding) * $1050 sq. ft.

For those of you noticing that the $58 million is more than the $57 million of ineligible costs documented above, this is because the $1050 number contains both the total eligible and ineligible costs of the school. About $6 million of the ineligible costs are for the high school sized gym, which by itself is reasonable. However, the architect chose to use a high school sized building when he added the high school sized gym, and that created the problem with the ineligible space. That extra space gives the town $52 million of ineligible space used for nothing of educational value.

The MSBA guideline for this school is 109,475 sq. ft. The Wildwood School Committee thinks we need 165,035 sq ft. Who’s right? The MSBA or the WSBC? It would be the MSBA. They are the experts. They’ve been involved with building almost all of the schools in Massachusetts over the last 25 years. They were also involved with the Wilmington High School when we built it in 2015. That school was built following the MSBA guidelines for high school size buildings. Nobody in Wilmington says the High School is too small.

I’m voting No because I believe Wilmington deserves a more fiscally responsible plan–one that aligns with MSBA guidelines and reflects the original educational vision. I would support a revised proposal for an elementary school that aligns more closely with MSBA size guidelines and better fits the needs of our entire community.

Sincerely,

Steven Berube
Wilmington Resident & Parent of 4

Links:

[1] Project Scope and Budget agreement

[2] Community Forum #2