Byline Work Completion Record Made Easy

Byline work completion record

[Music] good evening and welcome to buy line we're here at the amorous media studio and the show is co-sponsored by the amorous League of Women Voters and amorous media we're taking a break from our usual format in that we have an important conversation that is beginning and accelerating here in the community around the question of school construction for our elementary school children and so we're doing a two-part series tonight February 8th is the first part and on Monday evening the 11th will be the second part and that show will feature our town council president and the chair of the amherst school committee but tonight we have the chair and one of the two vice chairs of the fort River School Building Study Committee is that roughly the right title of that yes very good so thank you very much for being here so we have Jonathan salvan who is the chair of the committee and we have Maria Kopecky who is one of the two vice chairs and what we'd like to do is to help the community understand what your mission is how you came to be what you're doing how far along are you so let's just start with how did you get created and what is your charge so we were created by a town meeting in March of 2017 we were we've been actively meeting as a committee since October of 2017 and so we're a little over a year into our process of doing this feasibility study and the feasibility study is of it we are exploring the Fort River School building site and the building itself and looking at what's basically feasible with this building when it comes to or building in site when it comes to what you can do you know what range of things can you do on this site for for the students and teachers of a university yeah and in in May when when Town Meeting voted to approve this the the superintendent then the School Committee had come to town meeting and said look we'd like you to we'd like this site and school to be studied and see what we can do and that's exactly what we've been doing since October and so we have done site analysis we've done building analysis and we've come up with multiple options on how you can build a school at the Fort River Site for the range and enrollment is 315 to 465 students and as directed by the the School Committee and yeah we have five different options that meet all of those criteria very good and is it just looking at architectural and engineering type of elements or are there other pieces to this puzzles certainly there are other pieces to the puzzle in that broad span of time that we've we've been working as a committee we've really only been working with the designers since about August prior to that we were contracting for geotechnical borings we were getting a survey underway we did some air quality testing those are those are kind of big pre meeting with designer steps that we have taken and then once we hire the designers we worked with them initially to work on a draft educational program which Maria alluded to that's how we kind of got to our target population there was certainly guidance from the school committee that it was pre-k through six and and mostly three sections are intended to be three sections per grade but it involved talking the designers and members of the committee speaking with educational staff members to find out what would need to be in this building so to do basically a space summary and largely that would be how we developed the educational plan what we were doing in our process was largely mirroring the initial phases of a feasibility study that would have been would be conducted with the MSB a so in addition to that educational component we and the geotechnical and survey and and air quality testing once we had designers on board we then they didn't then had their consultants to extensive analysis of the structure of all the engineering components and we are at the point right now where they have developed out a total of six design options that range from completely new construction to various degrees of renovation plus a code upgrade option and we're in the midst of still working on cost estimates that's a long process but we've made a great deal of progress to show what could you do and the nature of the final product work product of the committee is a report is a feasibility study report bility study report and it will detail what is possible on the site and a variety of visions for what a building on that site might look like that's correct and it's pegged around a student body that's roughly the size of the current student body or is it large it's slightly increased you know today you know the school population at four rivers have shifted over time but today not all grades have three sections most of them are in fact two sections but we knowing what was happening within the school system we anticipated that with the dual language program starting up that in all likelihood a more realistic population at 4-4 River would in fact be three three sections per grade I mean just to touch a little bit on something that Maria mentioned a moment ago while we're and you know this was our committee was created kind of between MSBA processes and so we're not we're not actively engaged in one as part of our work but we modeled that process and tried to focus on how a feasibility study would be conducted and looked at if it were MSB a process so that we would have that best comparable data to the date of the town already had on the other site that's been looked at and the other site being the Wildwood site yeah so for our listeners there was a study a similar study done earlier and that was at the with regard to the Wildwood site so by doing this study both of those sites will be essentially in the same position in terms of the community considering what could take place on each of those sites yeah the previous the previous study did consider the Fort River Site as a possible location as well however the Fort River School had not been extensively studied and there hadn't been as detailed work at the Fort River Site I see okay and is that because we learned something from having done that previous study that we needed to go deeper or what what what changed in terms of why why why did we go deeper and for presently it had it had not been studied as to the same level Isaac so they are now kind of caught up when this when your work is completed and the report is submitted they will truly beyond evil footing with regard to considering each of those sites yes yes and varying options to look at and so this is not wasted effort in view of the fact that we have another process going absolutely not we now I think we're we're we're producing a array of data it did put it in those kind of terms that that should be applicable to any process that we go through next as a community you know whether it is something very technical like a geotechnical report or something a little bit more design oriented about how how do you adapt an open classroom building so let's say you're an architect and a parent yes and you're a former medical professional you were doctor and you're now a scientist you're in a lab at Amherst College and you have children yes Eric Nakajima is on the committee as well he's he's the chair of our Regional School Committee and he's the other Co vice-chair yeah yes yes your panel who are the other members oh I hope I don't miss anyone I'm sure they are sure because it would be helpful for the community to know what kinds of minds are at the table and also if you happen to know them and you have an opinion and you bump into them at the grocery store you you know who to talk to well dr. Moore sits in the committee in a non voting capacity and as Superintendent of Schools Diane Chamberlain the principal of Fort river sits on our capacity nur sits on our committee and is a voting member and everything else I'll mention this is a voting member we have another parent of a fort River or two more parents of Fort River students Heather Shelton and Alison page we have a school staff person benjamin harrington sorry am I forgetting now and our oh we have another parent in the the school system a parent who has a child or children at Wildwood that's arena to hug me thank you I can't do that pronunciation quite as low as you can we have a we have Rudy Perkins who is filling a role sort of as an expert in the bright board's expertise a person with a background in in the zero energy perspective and Anthony Delaney who is the procurement officer for the town and for the town and the the various roles that that people are filling we're defined by the school committee when they formed it and so they wanted somebody with to represent the town finance we do have a couple of open seats for for much of our work the town the facilities director purchase they did but that's an open opens well I think it's been recently filled but that's been an open slot and we don't currently have an active faculty member that's part of okay but that is yet it will be filled refilled presumably I've been part of in this defense and how quickly they fill in the roles and how much longer we're active as a committees okay so let's talk about community engagement because that's obviously an important part of any process here in town so you you will reach a point at which you will go to the public and I understand you've reached that point we have reached and tell us about what what that program looks like and how people engage with you well certainly anyone is always welcome to come to work one of our committee meetings and that's an already held and where they're typically Wednesdays and they're typically at the police station community room they're not every Wednesday they're usually every other Wednesday so we just met this Wednesday we'll meet again probably in two weeks website or something yes yeah we have a website that's linked through the town website you can find us there so go to the town website and and we have we have made every effort to get as all of our information up there so all of our documents are up there our minutes and thank you to Emerson media and volunteers from Amherst media who we arranged to have film all of our meetings and so that is people can tune in a lot people can watch those on amarus media YouTube or on their website and and you probably don't have that up on the town website right there's links to it through the yes okay terrific so you can catch up if you're new to town or if you've decided it's caught your attention and you want to go back and view some of them you can see all the meetings from the beginning that's correct beautiful so talks more about the engagement process that you're launching at this point coming up next week on the 13th in February 13th at 6:30 we're holding a community meeting in the middle school auditorium to kind of again do a little bit of what we're doing tonight kind of present the the history of the committee what we've been working on and to get feedback the the work product of our feasibility so are we asking the right questions are we gathering the right information have we looked at the right things so that's on the 13th that's on the 13th we're planning to hold one more we're still working on a final time and date and we'll we will post that very soon as soon as we get a chance time you they can also the public can also attend your meetings yes and follow the progress there do you have a public comment period we do it's typically fairly early in the meeting meeting yep although we have entertained questions during during our meetings as well from the public the other thing is that we have been to one pgo one of the elementary school P gos and we'll be presenting it the other two and are happy to come speak to anybody very good and how can people most constructively contribute to the conversation how much of this is technical how much of this is what I want for my child or my theory of education how do how do they constructively contribute to this work right given your charge why do I think is particularly technical what we want to know is is are we thinking confirm that we were thinking about the right things looking at the right items to provide the best information to the town and make sure that we're as compatible and as equal as you kind of talked earlier about where we're bringing the information on fort River to where the information was in the Wildwood project very good any additional thoughts on that um yeah I mean I think the the the we would love to hear from any members of the public I think what we were tasked to do is to answer two questions can you build on this site and tell us what you could do with a school of this side this size and I think we were answering those two questions the answer is yes and come see the different options and please tell us what you think about them and tell us what you think about any other parts of the process because we will be incorporating that information into our final product so upon completion of your public engagement component you will be taking all of those comments and and everything that you've learned into consideration and you will then be working to produce a final product do you have an estimated time table for completing the work we need to sit down with our design team and and actually establish that final timeline I don't think we're terribly far off but most of the writing work will will be done provide the design professionals and so we do have to have a conversation with them about what that that timetable should look like so the effort that's being made by the School Committee in relation to Superintendent Morris's concept that he put on the table I'm trying not to use the word proposal because it makes it feel like there's a school that we're talking about he has established parameters these are the five or six key things that he hopes the community will come to general agreement about so that the community will rally behind those concepts and get us to the school building Assistance Program and then come back to the community with a green light from him from the school building Assistance Program to proceed with the feasibility and moving to actually talking about specific school in a specific place of a specific size and design etc so you're their timetable as I understand it is that they will the school committee will finish its work in the middle of March the Town Council at the beginning of April so that we can meet an April 12th deadline at school building assistance let's overlay what you think might be happening with your timetable in relation to that where do you think for example you folks might be in your process approximately April 1 we'll be finishing up I mean we'll be getting there I would anticipate we are gonna have to meet more and finalize the budget discussion we need to have some final conversations about what the consultants found in their analysis of the existing building and site but in the end our work is going to inform that that sort of next conversation because we're again more than this current conversation it's going to be the next conversation because that's where that comparison that that that dual use or mutual use of data is going to be valuable at least that's that's my perspective that's how you see it yeah yeah our job was really our job is to provide information and we're putting some fine points on it I think we largely have that information we're going to be fine-tuning it getting it as accurate as we can but so it's important for the community to understand that your information gatherers digesters and reporters as opposed to making specific recommendations the recommendations come later as a result of s.p.a saying and really another process and a whole different process but using your information as part of that process that's right that's terrific so sometime this spring probably we're going to see a report come out of out of the committee where does the report go so we we take our work we present it to the school committee and that's really the sunset of our our committee it's work you know obviously if there are edits we need to make we'll do that but we don't go past this feasibility study level very good any additional thought on that yeah we have heard some questions from Town Council that you know they would might be interested in hearing our work and we're obviously you know that's so the town the new body our new legislature so that would make sense for you to come to make a presentation there at some point yeah we are task was to report to the school committee but it certainly makes sense to to talk to whoever wants to hear the information that we've gathered do you think that members of your panel are going to be consciously and actively engaged in the public process that's going on with the school committee and the Town Council at this point with regard to the bigger picture or our people so focused on this tasks and there's so much work to be done that you think people are mostly going to stay on task here as opposed to trying to engage in in the other part I mean as committee members well either as committee members or as residents of the community I think it's committee members we need to focus on our tasks because we do have a bit of work to do and everyone's got their own opinions and I can't say you know as the chair whether people engage at certain levels at that other process great are there other comments or things that my questions haven't elicited that should be put on the table so that the viewers can understand more about what you're doing if not then I'm going to take us off in a slightly different direction but I want to make sure that we've covered the entire terrain of what you need to and hope to communicate to our neighbors here in town with regard to your effort I think you've done a good job in capsule okay so we have a you know another five minutes or so so I'd like to explore with you a little bit if you have some thoughts as parents in town of what the nature of a school building should be going forward because we've lived with these schools for 50 years as far as I know everybody I've ever met is an expert on education because we all got one that's true and so it's really a challenge to get outside of your own experience and think about what education the education for the future looks like and therefore what our buildings should be looking like so I'm assuming you had some conversation about that in this process and curious whether you can share any of that without you know this isn't positions of the committee it's just some observations about what a school building of the future needs to be able to do or accommodate or look like well it's interesting you know during our process one of the first things that we talked about is how do we need to be guided and we came up with a list of non-negotiable items that we had heard and I think that I'd like to stay with how the committee looks at it we were tasked with finding a solution to the building problems that solve a number of issues eliminating open classroom design making sure that there is good acoustics good air quality natural light accessibility safety I'm o providing cost estimates that consider all the costs that would be involved including operational costs help me out Jonathan I feel like I'm missing some well we have to hit the net zero by being compliant life cycle costing operating the building which would include the energy and also what you know this this would be the first building that we municipal building that would be complying with with the Net Zero bylaw and there's all a lot of decision making and options that go into that and so we've explored that deeply and that I think guided us through this process so that the options that we are providing meet all of those criteria so we have three buildings in town that were built that I'm remembering in the last five years or so the Hitchcock Center for the environment the design building the over design building at UMass and a building at Hampshire College which were all Net Zero I think the UMass one was net zero energy but at least all three of them involved wood construction which is going is what is that back to the future where you know everything used to be built with wood and then we went to break and then it's a lot of Steel etc was there any discussion about the types of materials that might be used in the construction of the school or alternative construction methods that are forward-looking rather than what you would traditionally see in a public school building so I'm going to put on my architects hat because during during the day my day job and and say no we didn't and and didn't get into quite that level of detail primarily because we are a feasibility study committee and some of those decisions really come come later but kind of thinking both as an architect and as a parent and as a parent I'm just kind of blown away by the quality of the teaching that gets done in our schools regardless of their of their condition I mean I think we have a fabulous set of professionals in this community but getting back to what Maria was saying about you know light-filled non-open I do personally like the notion of wood and you know but there are a wide range of aesthetics that achieve the goal of a modern 21st century school but they tend to be decisions that are further downstream not just of our feasibility study but but any prop in a project that's something that the architects would kind of present to the community you know and and walk through the community through what does your school really want to feel and be like and it gets do a lot more than just okay how many boxes of classrooms that are XYZ size and so in reality there's there's an amazing opportunity the community has as part of a new building ultimately to affect just the sort of things you've been talking about you know one of the reasons that we picked the designers that we did to help us with this is that they had that perspective and they they are very conscious of the kind of materials in addition they have experienced not only renovating open classrooms but also they have deep experience with green energy and with Net Zero and so they brought that to the table a lot of those other those find much more fine-tuned decisions are something that would happen far later in a building process more than in schematic design but they certainly our designers certainly approached it with an eye toward that I was very interesting to me because I had some involvement with the design building because they had designed a traditional construction and then John Olver said how can you build a building that is going to house our natural resources programs without considering wood at this point and he convinced the university and I worked with them to do the transition where they were today it was only they had they had to do some redesign but they were able to do the construction cost as I understand it within the existing budget that they had done so it's not a wild it's not a totally wild crazy thing and we are a forested state about somewhere around somewhere I'm going to say it's forty to sixty percent of our land is forested and be really interesting to see if we could add over time to this momentum around natural design and construction and with that I want to thank you both for being with us and I want to thank all of our listeners for watching tonight so remember this is a two part series on Monday evening you will see the second part of this conversation about our conversation here in town about building new schools for our children and we'll have Lynn grease movie town council president and Anastasia Ordonez who is the School Committee Chair we'll continue this conversation and talk about their process leading to decision on filing an application potentially on April 12th for another round so hope you'll all engage in this process it's a second bite at the Apple we have another chance to go back to the school building Assistance Program in Boston and get our fair share of state funds to improve school building here in our town and we want to thank you guys for your service on the fort River building planning Study Committee and thank you all again for being with us thank you have a good night [Music] [Music]