Amesbury Additional: 5th Meeting About Amesbury Elementary, March 25th

 
Amesbury Additional: Amesbury Elementary School:

This is the first edition of the Amesbury Additional, which relates information about the best (and only) city of Amesbury in the United States. It's an effort to cover local news, which might not be relevant to normal readers, but it might prove worthwhile in the future, and won't be taking up time from any other category.

Without further ado.

The city of Amesbury needs to replace one of its two Elementary Schools, incidentally called Amesbury Elementary School. The original building was constructed in the 1960's and is quickly becoming unsuitable for students. Throughout 2018, the city held four meetings to receive input from the citizens of Amesbury about the location and disposition of the school. I attended two of those meetings.

This meeting, the 5th to discuss the new school, was attended by approximately 50 residents and ten officials involved in the project, including Amesbury Mayor Ken Gray.

In the prior four meetings it was decided, with input from the residents of the city, that the new school would house Pre-K, K, 1st, and 2nd graders, and would not be rebuilt on the current AES plot, but next to the other Amesbury Elementary school, Cashman Elementary. Cashman and the current AES are both neighborhood schools, each with their own Pre-K through 4th grade. The new plan will transform Cashman into a 3rd - 5th grade school. The two buildings will share a parking lot with 200 spaces and buses will enter from Lions Mouth Road, as they currently do for Cashman. After dropping students off at Cashman, the buses will drive about 500ft to the new Amesbury Elementary, and then depart out a new exit road, back onto Lions Mouth Road.

At this meeting, the designers showed schematics of the new school. The project is still in the design stage, and a number of pictures were displayed to illustrate what the school might look like. The proposed style used a combination of brick, concrete, and numerous windows to create the effect of a comforting, study building, with an abundance of natural light. The structure is suitable for solar panels and will be entirely air conditioned. The plan calls for a three story building, with the main entrance situated to the 2nd story. The bottom floor, will contain the Pre-K and Kindergarten classrooms, and the kitchen, and a cafeteria and stage. The cafeteria and kitchen will be partly built into a hill, but one side will be well lit with windows, and exits onto a playground.

The second floor (the entrance) will contain the administrative offices and a gym, and house the 1st grade classrooms. The 3rd floor will include the library in addition to the 2nd grade classrooms.

The current cost estimates are between 50 to 53 million dollars for construction, plus another 12 million for associated costs, bring the total project cost to around 62 to 66 million. To pay for the construction, the city of Amesbury intends to take out a 20 year bond. The committee expects the annual tax increase for the average homeowner will be 450 to 490 dollars. The project is being sponsored by the Massachusetts School Building Authority, who covers up to 55% of eligible costs. The committee to develop the new school, estimates that the MSBA will cover about 40% of the Amesbury Elementary School.

The timeline for project is as follows. The final Cost Estimate will be completed in May or June of this year, 2019. The completed Design Submission is due on July 10th, 2019. Another city meeting will be held to allow residents to see the results of both reports. On August 28th, the City Board will vote on whether to begin construction. If the City Board approve the project, the residents of Amesbury will have to certify it in a November 2019 vote. Then, if everything goes according to plan, construction will begin in the spring of 2020, and the building will be completed by the summer of 2022.

In conclusion, while the previous meetings had included surveys and questions for the public, this was purely informational. At the end, there was time for questions, and this meeting was also less contentious then the previous ones. Some questioned issues which were already decided, such placing the schools close to each other, removing the neighborhood system previously in place in Amesbury, and of course, one person questioned the cost.

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