HANOVER – Some change is going to come to South Shore Tech, as the school has said farewell and good fortune to Principal Mark Aubrey, as they begin the visioning process with the Massachusetts School Building Authority and project team for a renovation expansion project expected to begin in 2025.
The renovation project team is made up of a cross-section of students and parents.
“The purpose of the visioning session is akin to … a menu of options [and] the vision is where we choose the ingredients,” Superintendent-Director Dr. Thomas J. Hickey said during the recent School Committee meeting on Wednesday, June 14. “We talk about what we value in a school, we talk about what we value in terms of its architecture, how it responds to the community and what we need for instruction.”
The first of three such sessions was held on Tuesday, June 13. A public session will be held on Thursday, July 13. The sessions are held via Zoom virtual meeting and representatives of town governing bodies from the district’s member communities will be sent out to the July 13 session, Hickey said.
“These documents are an essential part of the beginning process for design,” he said. “It will eventually, by the end of this calendar year, lead us to narrowing down with the School Building Committee, a preferred option, and it should eventually lead to an action of this committee for something – probably in early 2025 – to go to the voters.”
Hickey said that, while there is still a long way to go with a lot of work to do on the project, he was glad to get it started with a strong response from parents and staff to get that started.
The committee approved budget transfers for three expenditures, including renovation design, a lease contract for three propane buses and vocational equipment purchases.
A stabilization transfer for $73,366 from the FY 2023 surplus revenue account for design and renovation purposes was approved.
“We scrubbed the numbers – both on the revenue said and the expense side to come up with a number as far as was there anything left in order to move money around at the end of the year,” said Treasurer James Coughlin.
A transfer of $434,760 for the lease/purchase of three new propane buses.
“With the surplus this year, we have a contract,” Coughlin said. “We can encumber the money and, by doing it now, we’re saving $45,000 in charges, so it’s a financially savvy move to pay off the lease as, pretty much a purchase of three buses.”
The district has been running propane buses for a few years now, which have proven to run cleaner, quieter and with fewer maintenance issues than diesel buses. This purchase makes the school bus fleet all propane vehicles.
The third transfer of $90,000 will fund the purchase of vocational equipment in need of replacement.
In other business, Assistant Principal Sandra Baldner reported on the end-of-the-school year activities as well as the annual summer program set to begin July 10 with 150 middle school students registered to explore nine vocational programs.
“I’m grateful to the professionalism and dedication of the school administrators, teachers and paraprofessionals who are making SST a year-round, day and night destination,” she said.
Baldner was appointed the school’s new principal effective July 1.
Aubrey, who is leaving to take a position at Blue Hills Regional, said he wanted to thank the committee – and the “brethren before you” – for the last 24 years.
“I will be gone and I wish nothing but the best for South Shore Tech,” he said. “You guys are going be a fabulous school, and I will be touring when you get that new school, because I want to see it.”
Hickey, on behalf of all the school’s graduates for Aubrey’s service, presented him with an Adirondak chair crafted by carpentry shop students, with a nameplate made by students in the manufacturing shop..
“I’m, not sure if we pulled this off or not,” he said, unveiling the chair that was hidden in the back of the room.