WHITMAN – While 2023 ended with the question of whether a new Whitman Middle School would be built, in the coming year the same question faces voters – as one of nine member communities being asked to support a new South Shore Tech.
“Our goal is not to build the absolute biggest thing we can build,” said SST Superintendent-Director Dr. Thomas J. Hickey, as some voters brought their questions to an informational meeting held in Whitman Town Hall on Thursday, Dec. 14. “We have to build something that is as affordable as possible.”
He was joined by Project Manager Jen Carlson from the firm LeftField, Educational Consultant Adele Sands, and Carl Franshesci from architectural firm DRA. Whitman’s representative to the SST School Committee, Select Board Vice Chair Dan Salvucci also attended, as did Select Board member Justin Evans, who also serves on the Whitman Middle School Building Committee.
Whitman Finance Committee members Kathleen Ottina and Rosemary Connolly also attended and asked several questions.
“We’ve accomplished a lot as a building committee in the last few months,” Hickey said, as he began with an overview of the project and its status before taking those questions. “I promise you there are slides that say ‘Show me the money.’”
Opened in 1962, SST is the second-oldest regional-vocational school in Massachusetts with the original member communities of Abington, Cohasset, Hanover, Norwell, Rockland and Scituate, with Whitman and Hanson joining the region in the 1982-83 school year. Marshfield is now in the process of joining the district and Pembroke is considering that move.
“If we decide to bring in more communities that are not part of a regional voke later on, we’ll bring them in knowing they’ll help with cost-sharing, but those conversations are entirely separate from this,” Hickey said.
Marshfield will be paying a portion a share of the project in fiscal 2026, the first anticipated year of bond anticipation notes.
“Marshfield’s annual debt share will adjust with their enrollment, as they add students for fiscal ’26, ’27, ’28 and ’29,” Hickey said. “Then, on Oct. 1, 2028, as we’re preparing the fiscal ’30 budget, Mansfield’s share will be fixed.”
For example, if Marshfield sends 20 kids per year, it would put them at 11.9 percent of total school enrollment, translating to an 11.9 percent cut for each of the towns. It would be the district’s largest sending community with an eighth-grade class of more than 250 kids.
Whitman’s eighth-grade class is currently 174.
“Second-oldest doesn’t mean [it’s a] decrepit building,” he said. “We’re a well-maintained building, but we just happened to be the second one in Massachusetts to experiment with this model.
With a larger school building, Hickey said plumbing and veterinary technician can be added to the 12 shop specialties taught to the 670 students already attending SST.
Hickey said people have been asking him for decades why the school hasn’t offered a plumbing program, but the space limitations have not permitted it.
“Over the last 10 years, the number of kids who would like to come, but there is no space, has averaged out at about 68 students,” he said. “That’s an important number for me to factor in when making recommendations about what we could potentially build for – what is the demand?”
The average freshman class now numbers between 175 and 180 students. Each town is apportioned a number of seats each year, based on the number of eighth graders in each town and there is an application process. While some towns use all their seats and have excess demand, of which Whitman is one, with the highest population in the school for a few years. Other towns, like Cohasset and Norwell, have seats left unfilled and are reapportioned to communities with excess demand.
SST has been filing statements of interest with the Massachusetts School Building Authority for a school project since 2015, and were invited into the process in March 2022.
“We’ll have something that’s safer, that will allow us not to have modular units,” he said. “The bread and butter of our school is our shop space … to teach kids the trade skills they need.”
As an example, he said that, if all the school’s carpentry students stopped or were unable to go out on cooperative learning work in the upper grades, Hickey doubts there would be room for all of them to safely work in the Carpentry Shop.
The useful life of the building and its systems is also a concern.
SST’s education plan and preliminary design program are now under review by the MSBA. The building committee looked at several design options and five different enrollments, narrowing it to three plans. All information about the SST school design options and cost projections are available on a website: southshoretechproject.com.
“By the end of January [2024] we, as a building committee, will make two decisions – which design do we want to push forward and what will the enrollment number be?” Hickey said. “Then we go into 2024, working with the MSBA … and, ultimately and hopefully, they will then approve a project, with a project funding agreement and reimbursement rates in August.”
The process would culminate with a ballot question going before voters in late January 2025.
SST is also on a small site with environmental limitations, including wetlands, which is why at least one design is for an addition/renovation – which would bring no MSBA reimbursement – but Marshfield will be helping with cost-sharing.
“That amount is not something voters would know when making an educated decision on the project, but it is likely to assist,” he said. “We’re looking at an add/reno and two projects for new construction that we’re calling ‘2.0’ and ‘2.1.’”
The main differences between them is the layout of athletic fields where the current school is as well as the location of a multi-purpose auditorium – with retractable stadium seats so the space can be used for sports and other programs as well as performances – dining commons, gym and locker rooms.
“Every square foot that we’re asking for has got to have more than one purpose,” he said. “Having [all that] in one area is an important theme. Of the three floors this one probably has the most unique elements.”
Design 2.0 places them to one side of the school building center. Design 2.1 puts them in the center of the building.
Hickey said the decision on locating the common areas are still under discussion, but fundamentally, the general layout of both designs are the same.
Two enrollment figures have been prioritized for the new building – 805 and 900. The building space, now at 130,000 square feet on one level, will expand to between 240,000 and 260,000 square feet on multiple levels.
“The first floor is focused on our shops,” Hickey said.
Any new construction will have to be to the rear of the property, where baseball and football fields are now.
If the MSBA gives its approval in the summer of 2024, a district-wide ballot question will go before voters in January 2025 and the project will enter the design phase in 2025 to early 2026, entering the construction phase in 2026 to mid-2028 to be opened for the 2028-29 school year.