Wilmington officials have mixed feelings on new school consolidation options

Dec 14, 2023

WILMINGTON — Town officials expressed mixed reactions to a proposal to add additional grade configuration and building options to the plan to study consolidating Wilmington's schools into fewer buildings.

The Select Board, School Committee, Finance Committee and School Building Committee met May 31 in a joint meeting to hear from Superintendent of Schools Glenn Brand, Town Manager Jeff Hull and project managers about adding new options to the Wildwood Early Childhood Center Project.

The town and school district are examining three potential options to deal with the sudden closure of the Wildwood Early Childhood Center last year and to potentially consolidate the number of schools in the district to have fewer buildings. The first option is to renovate and make additions to the Wildwood building, which serves preschool and kindergarten, and keep the existing grade and building configuration that exists today.

The second option would be converting a school building into a preschool-third grade facility. This would result in either the permanent closure of the Wildwood or Woburn Street Elementary School, while the other serves as the preschool-third grade space. This option, the project managers said, would be scrapped if the town chooses to study the new consolidation options.

The third existing option would be to create a preschool-fifth grade facility with renovations to one of either the Wildwood building, the Woburn building or the North Intermediate School building, while the two that are not chosen would be closed.

The first of the new options, which project managers from Dore & Whittier and SMMA said would need to be brought to the Massachusetts School Building Authority, would be to make at least one school building into a preschool-fourth grade facility, and to shift eighth-graders into the Wilmington High School and fifth-graders into Wilmington Middle School.

This could come with options to have a preschool-fourth grade school at either Wildwood, Woburn or North serving students on Wilmington's north side, or to have a single preschool-fourth grade school serving the entire town.

The second new option would be to have a preschool-fifth grade facility at either Wildwood, Woburn or North for the town's north side, or to have a single new facility for preschool-fifth grade for the whole town while up to six of the district's school buildings are retired.

At the joint meeting, Brand said that Dore & Whittier had identified the middle school and high school as having more potential space for students than is being used right now, which would support a grade reconfiguration between both schools. Dore & Whittier Project Manager Rani Philip said that there is uneven usage of capacity across the entire district.

"There is a mismatch in capacity between the existing facilities and the actual enrollment," Philip said.

The Boutwell Early Childhood Center and Woburn are over capacity, Philip said, while West Intermediate School, North Intermediate School, Wilmington Middle School and Wilmington High School are below the student capacity.

"There appears to be more than enough capacity in the district, it is just in all the wrong places," Philip said.

Brand also noted that there could be issues with that plan not because of spacing, but incompatible programming for the existing building.

"Typically, when the eighth grade is brought into a high school, it is done when a new facility is built with that change in mind," said Brand.

SMMA Director of Owner Project Management Services Julie Leduc said that the MSBA encouraged the joint meeting to present these newly identified options for potential consolidation, and that if the town does choose to add these new options for consideration, it will move the project back one phase.

"We would move back from the feasibility study phase into the eligibility period," said Leduc, adding that if that is done, the project would get back to its current feasibility study phase in October, turning it from a seven-year project to an eight-year project.

After the presentation by the project managers, multiple town officials expressed some frustration that these new options were only being presented to them for the first time then, and that they wished for more time for review before they were compelled to vote on potentially delaying the Wildwood project.

"How can we vote on something tonight when we haven't had time to digest it? If you asked us to vote, I would recommend we not take a vote because we do not have enough information yet," said Select Board Chair Gary DePalma.

Select Board member Frank West had concerns about the potential of consolidating Wilmington's schools to the point of possibly six buildings being closed.

"When you consolidate buildings, what happens 30 years from now if we only have three schools and one of them failed for some reason?" West asked.

Brand noted that the joint meeting was simply meant to present new options to look into for the Wildwood project, and was not meant to get any sort of commitment to one particular plan.

"Nothing ventured, nothing gained," Brand said in support of exploring the new options. "This is not a commitment or a sign-on, it isn't a commitment to a certain project.

"I think it is something worth considering as a community," Brand added.

Finance Committee member Brad Jackson spoke on his experience as the superintendent in Holliston Public Schools.

"I wish I could go back 25 years and have the conversation we are having now, and to have the study these people are proposing," said Jackson. "It is worth the wait for one year to have a comprehensive look at all of our options. We have to look out 20 years, 30 years."

Jackson noted that many of Wilmington's existing school buildings are many decades old, and sooner or later will have to be replaced anyway.

"To study this, to me, is a no brainer," said Jackson. "It could yield a more short-term expensive solution that may not be politically viable in this community, but that is the information the community needs to make an intelligent, well-informed decision."

Without specifying which, Jackson remarked that he thinks some of the consolidation options being presented are "horrible," and others "awesome."

School Committee Chair David Ragsdale said he personally does not like the idea of moving fifth grade and eighth grade up to new buildings due to what he said are differently structured educational programs.

"You can put it in the building, but that doesn't necessarily mean the educational program fits there or can mesh properly with the high school," said Ragsdale.

Regardless, Ragsdale said he sees the benefits in having more consolidation options to explore in depth before such a big decision can be made for Wilmington.

"I hate the idea of a delay, but we have to look at the long-term. For the length of time the kids are expected to be in these buildings, a six- to eight-month delay is not much," said Ragsdale.

As a next step, the individual boards and committees that are party to the Wildwood project will have to vote at their next meetings in June whether to accept the new potential consolidation options and resubmit to the MSBA.

In an informal "hand-raise" vote taken at the joint meeting to gauge the overall feelings towards the new options, a vast majority present from the committees indicated that they would support it, but three out of five members of the Select Board, Lilia Maselli, Frank West and Kevin Caira, did not raise their hands. Maselli specified that she wasn't inherently opposed to the new options, but she wanted more information.

Sign up for email newsletters