Schools Superintendent Thomas Jefferson has announced that the Harvard preschool programs will not occupy the Shirley School at Devens beginning September 2009. The Shirley School facility has been vacant since July 2008 and the School Committee had been considering housing the Harvard preschool programs at the school. Jefferson told the School Committee on April 13, “While we do continue to have potential uses for the Shirley School at Devens, we do not have a viable business plan that would provide the needed nursing and receptionist staff to allow us to run programs there in the fall of 2009.”
Jefferson explained that there isn’t enough enrollment in those programs to justify the added cost of expanding to the Shirley School and adding staff. The preschool program at St. Agnes School on Devens is currently meeting the needs of educating Devens preschool students, he said.
The Shirley School at Devens, located at 270 Barnum Road, was originally the Fort Devens Child Development Center when the Army was located at Devens. It became part of the Devens school system in 2001. There are nine classrooms, a full kitchen, and two playgrounds, and the facility has the capacity to educate 250 students in a preschool or kindergarten program. The school’s space availability, ample parking, and playground access were strong attractions for the School Committee.
When committee members negotiated a new contract with MassDevelopment last year, they agreed to educate all students in grades kindergarten through grade 12 who are living at Devens beginning in September 2009. Prior to last year all Devens students in kindergarten through grade 5 were educated by the Shirley school system; the children enrolled in pre-K and kindergarten classes were taught at the Shirley School on Devens. Last September those children were enrolled at the Laura White Elementary School on Lancaster Road in Shirley. The contract with MassDevelopment gives the town of Harvard the option to develop a preschool program at the Shirley School facility, should the School Committee determine a use for the building in the future.
Concerned that MassDevelopment would not keep the school facility vacant indefinitely, School Committee member Keith Cheveralls asked whether the committee needed to write a formal letter to MassDevelopment to communicate its desire to keep the option of occupying the facility at a later date if it decided to expand the education programs in Harvard. He added, “Is there a point in time when we would lose our option of occupancy?”
Jefferson told the committee that during his communications with Rich Montuori, MassDevelopment’s executive vice president of Devens operations and defense sector initiatives, Montuori had said that MassDevelopment was “comfortable” with the School Committee’s decision to delay occupancy. He agreed with Cheveralls’ suggestion to write a formal letter, adding, “We would be well-served to have the specificity of the timeline articulated to MassDevelopment so that we can keep the door open.”
