ORANGE — All of Orange’s elementary school students — from preschoolers to sixth graders — should go to Fisher Hill Elementary School.
That is the option architects and school officials are choosing to pursue after months of studying potential solutions for the Dexter Park project. The project is the town’s effort to replace Dexter Park Innovation School, currently the town’s school for third through sixth grade, which has the lowest possible rating from the Massachusetts School Building Authority.
The town’s School Building Committee met with architects from Raymond Design Associates (RDA) and Martin Goulet of Hill International Inc., which is managing the project on behalf of the town, Thursday night, and unanimously decided to pursue renovating and adding to Fisher Hill as the town’s future elementary school.
“We have a great opportunity to build a great campus,” said School Committee member Alex Schwanz. “A school is not just the building itself.”
The plan now is to add a three-story wing to the northern side of the current Fisher Hill building, which would be where students in the third grade up will be educated. The new wing would also be where a new entrance to the school would be built, with a new driveway to control traffic flow.
Preschool and kindergarten students would still be educated in the same areas they currently are, with a new playground to added.
The final result would not just be the three-story addition, however. Architects at RDA emphasized that the current building would be renovated, potentially getting new, larger windows to let in more natural light.
The addition and renovation would happen during “phased construction,” with some construction happening in the summer and some during the school year, said Dan Bradford, project architect for RDA, with Dexter Park students staying in school there during construction. After the wing is completed, Dexter Park would be demolished, and new playing fields built over Dexter Park’s current footprint.
Schwanz and others liked the idea of having more fields at Fisher Hill, and mentioned the possibility of town residents being able to use them during after-school hours for recreation.
Many of the details of the project still need to be fleshed out, but, according to Goulet, initial price estimates put the project at around $50.9 million — about 80 percent of which is estimated to be reimbursed by the Massachusetts School Building Authority.
Goulet said there are many variables, such as materials and window sizes, that could increase or decrease the price, and that he’ll be a “stick in the mud” reminding the town that “everything has a price tag.”
Of course, this project will not happen if it is not accepted by Orange voters, who just rejected a half-million-dollar Proposition 2½ tax override this past week amid fiscal woes.
Hill International and RDA expect to present a final schematic design and proposal for the project to be finished early next year, and for residents to vote on the project at the 2020 Annual Town Meeting.
Build-time estimates are around 24 months from when the construction starts, Bradford said.
The project chosen Thursday night is the result of an $875,000 feasibility study voters approved last year to examine potential solutions to the problems at Dexter Park.
Built in 1951, Dexter Park was designated a “Category 4” school by the Massachusetts School Building Authority in 2006. Category 4 is the worst rating from the authority, and demonstrates a need for substantial repairs or replacement. Only one of nine schools in the state with Category 4 status, Dexter Park was given the designation due to boiler and heating problems, a leaking roof, asbestos and opaque windows.
The feasibility study — also being reimbursed by the state at a rate around 80 percent — looked at more than 20 options to fix these problems, including renovating Dexter Park, building a new school on Ralph C. Mahar Regional School’s campus, and resurrecting the old Butterfield School building, which was closed in 2015 to alleviate pressure on the town budget.
Thursday night, only two options remained — the Fisher Hill addition and renovation, and an entirely new three-story building to be built in front of the current Dexter Park building. The latter option was eliminated for several reasons: First, it would be slightly more expensive than the Fisher Hill option, and second, only Dexter Park would be demolished, leaving Fisher Hill a decommissioned building overlooking the new school.
A detailed schematic of the Fisher Hill addition and renovation is viewable on the project’s Facebook page called “Dexter Park Improvements.”