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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