What's the Latest on the Winchester High School Renovations Proposal?

By Mark Ouellette

In our latest You Ask, Patch Answers story, we address a reader's inquiry into where things stand with the Winchester High School renovations proposal.

Representatives from Cambridge-based architectural firm Symmes Maini & McKee Associates gave a presentation of the latest schematic design during the Winchester School Committee session Thursday night at the high school auditorium.

Edward Frenette, project director for Symmes Maini & McKee Associates, outlined how about 75 percent of the project's price tag consists of construction costs, while the remaining 25 percent pertain to associated costs which include moving, legal and a number of other costs. The high school project is currently estimated to cost nearly $132 million, with $101 million in construction costs and $31 million in associated costs, according to Frenette.

Superintendent William McAlduff told the committee that the schematic design would be submitted to the MSBA by Thursday, Aug. 8. The MSBA would then review the project's merits and arrive at a decision during their Board of Directors meeting on Oct. 2, he added. 

If approved, the town may be reimbursed an estimated $45 million by the MSBA for the high school renovations project, according to the superintendent. Town Meeting would be held in November, while a town-wide override vote for the project may happen on Dec. 10 if the Board of Selectmen approve that date, according to McAlduff.

McAlduff is hopeful that the three-phase project can begin phase one in the summer of 2014, which he noted would be considerably sooner than the alternative of building a completely new high school. Erecting a new high school likely would have taken upward of 2 1/2 years to complete, according to McAlduff.

Students would be in modular swing space starting in the fall of 2014, according to McAlduff. "Sometime early in the 2015-16 school year, we will have students moving back into a newly renovated portion of this project," said the superintendent. 

The final phase of the project would involve finishing the auditorium and gymnasium.

Lorraine Finnegan, a project manager for Symmes Maini & McKee Associates, explained that there would be an unassigned space next to a studio just off the entry to the gymnasium inside the renovated high school near for WinCAM should they be interested in using it.

McAlduff provided an overview of some of the planned improvements at the high school, which includes:

• Forty-nine classrooms, with 12 dedicated to three science disciplines (biology, chemistry and physics).

• Music classrooms, which currently " do not meet standards for performance and practice," McAlduff said, would meet standards in the future.

• New design would be built to address special needs students, which was not envisioned when the high school was first built.

• Art instruction spaces will be completely redesigned and will no longer service as "a shared warehouse space," McAlduff said.

The School Committee unanimously approved three items added to the scope of the design, including establishing a music suite, parking on Skillings Field and earthwork disposal.