Let's Rebuild Winchester High School

Winchester has an excellent public school system.  This is no accident.  Winchester families have long understood that strong schools are the bedrock of a strong community, and today’s residents benefit from the investments made by previous generations.

Now we must invest in the next generation of students by rebuilding a high school facility that no longer meets our needs.  Winchester High School has failing systems, insufficient capacity to meet enrollment growth, and is unable to support the educational programming needs of the 21st century.

Over the past three years, local and state officials have worked diligently to analyze all available options to address these deficiencies.  They have carefully considered all relevant criteria, including educational requirements, cost, location, site feasibility, community needs, sustainability, impact on current students, and others.  The result is a comprehensive plan to rebuild Winchester High School that is educationally, operationally and fiscally sound.

From the beginning, the Town has partnered with the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA).  The MSBA collaborates with school districts across the state to ensure that school building projects are the right-sized, most fiscally responsible, and educationally appropriate solutions.  The MSBA has been involved in, or is currently working on, more than 450 projects, ensuring a deep base of knowledge and experience.  Any school building project that receives MSBA funding approval has been through an exhaustive vetting process that typically takes 3-4 years.

In 2010, while we were working with the MSBA on the feasibility study for the Vinson-Owen elementary school, we invited the MSBA’s Executive Director, Katherine Craven, to tour Winchester High School.  For a town the size of Winchester, it is unusual for the MSBA to support more than one school building project at the same time.  The MSBA already understood the extraordinary enrollment growth in Winchester, which ranks in the top ten school districts statewide for enrollment growth over the past decade.  All these additional students will begin arriving at the high school soon.  When touring the high school, MSBA officials acknowledged the failing condition of the building and its inability to support a modern educational program.  As a result, Winchester became one of only a handful of communities to receive approval from the MSBA to proceed with two projects at the same time.

At its meeting last month, the MSBA Board of Directors voted unanimously to approve up to $44.5 million in state funding to partially reimburse the Town of Winchester for the cost of rebuilding the high school.  Under MSBA regulations, the Town now has 120 days to receive all necessary local approvals for the project.

This means that $44 million in state funding is now at stake. 

If Winchester voters do not support an override on December 10 to fund the Town’s share of the project cost, then we will forfeit this state funding.  The MSBA received 201 statements of interest this year from school districts across the Commonwealth.  Many of these schools are in terrible shape.  The MSBA has limited resources; if local support to rebuild Winchester High School is lacking, the MSBA will move on.

Winchester taxpayers would be left bearing the full burden of tens of millions of dollars in capital costs to make repairs to the high school facility, address enrollment growth, and update the science labs and other resources to support a 21st century curriculum.

The smart financial decision is to seize the opportunity before us to partner with the Commonwealth to rebuild Winchester High School.

State Senator Katherine Clark

State Senator Patricia Jehlen

State Representative Jason Lewis