It took one bike ride up Prospect Hill Road on an October Saturday afternoon for my future wife and I to decide to move to Harvard. It was before MCAS told us how good the schools were, and we came here for the look and feel of the town. Our three kids went through the school system, including the K-wing, gym, and cafeteria, when it was much more crowded. They are now all in college.
I did my part here. I was elected to the Planning Board twice and to the Board of Selectmen three times. I served on the Bromfield School building committee from start to finish. I brokered the compromise that ventilated the crawl space at the HES K-wing and enabled it to function while we paid off Bromfield. I have no doubt that we now need to replace the K-wing.
Somehow that simple need, and the concurrent need to address deficiencies in the newer part of the school, have morphed into a $54 million Christmas tree with just about every bauble the School Committee can hang on it. I don’t have the time to follow things like I used to, but it looks like our square-foot costs are more than twice the state’s allocation for reimbursement. This isn’t the first time a town committee has gone off the rails, but it sure is a prime example of the process.
Most Harvard residents aren’t poor, but they do believe in getting value for their taxes and they will have college tuitions to deal with. It doesn’t do much good to graduate from an expensive, bright, and shiny school only to have to load up on student loans because the tax burden meant you couldn’t afford to save for college. You can still be a strong supporter of public education and question the need to go all-in on a brand-new school. And it’s legitimate to ask how we can afford all the other things people in town value if we struggle to pay for that school for the next 25 years.
Bill Marinelli
Stow Road
