A divided Board of Selectmen voted Tuesday night to support the financing of a brand-new elementary school.
The vote was 3–2, with board members Stu Sklar, Alice von Loesecke, and Kara Minar voting in favor of Article 25 on this year’s Annual Town Meeting warrant, and Chairwoman Lucy Wallace and Selectman Ken Swanton voting against. By their majority vote, the selectmen join the School, Finance, and capital committees in recommending that the town borrow $53.6 million to construct a replacement for Hildreth Elementary School that would include administrative offices as well as classrooms, a cafeteria, and a gymnasium.
In opposing Article 25, Wallace said she felt that taking on the project would be a “tsunami of expenses” for the town and impinge on the operating budget as well as future projects. She said she was not only worried that young families would not move to town because they could not afford it but that retirees would move out. The town needs to keep its retirees, Wallace said, “not only for the diversity of the community, but for the services they provide.” And she worried about what the increase in taxes would do to the cost of housing. “I truly appreciate the work of [the building] committee,” she said. “You couldn’t have a better committee to look at something as complicated as this. We all wake up at 11 when the bill is due at 11:30. It’s frustrating to the people who worked hard. I’m just not convinced it’s the best decision to make.”
Von Loesecke, who characterizes herself “very much a fiscal conservative,” said she was an enthusiastic supporter of the article. She told her colleagues she began her term on the School Building Committee (SBC) convinced that a renovation would prove to be the best course.
But what changed her mind was hearing the architects say they could not guarantee that a renovated building would last longer than 25 to 30 years. “There were inherent structural issues,” she said. And in visiting neighboring towns, she realized how much better the schools built there in recent years were able to meet the needs of teachers and students for flexible learning environments. If Hildreth was ailing and already out of step with what had been built elsewhere, it made no sense, she had concluded, to hang on to the current building for another 30 years. When the building committee members had first estimated what the impact of a renovation might be, they concluded that an 11 percent increase in everyone’s tax bill would be necessary to pay for it. “Now we can get a whole new school for that amount,” she said.
Spreading town finances too thin
Swanton echoed Wallace’s concerns in his opposition to the article. He said the project would spread the town’s finances “too thin,” making Harvard vulnerable to an economic downturn. He said the K-wing needed to be replaced, but he was convinced there was an alternative that did not require tearing down the whole building.
Minar, however, said that having run through the numbers with von Loesecke and Finance Committee Chairman Don Ludwig, whom she trusted, it was “hard not to see that in the long term, the best choice is to build a new school.” She said it was “a lot to ask,” but she planned to vote in favor of the project.
Sklar concurred. “I think [the current school] is making people sick and has been for 20 years,” he said. “Aside from the touchy-feely stuff [that the new building would offer teachers and students], it’s fiscally the best solution for the town.”
The narrow Tuesday night decision of the selectmen reflects the passions the proposal has aroused. Over the past two weeks postings for and against the project on Nextdoor Harvard have surged. The social media site has become a flashpoint for opinions on the project, with advocates and school officials contributing their perspectives daily. The Harvard Press has been inundated with letters and opinion pieces evenly divided between advocates pro and con. The paper has devoted a high percentage of its reporting to the topic.
Those for and against the project have each formed a ballot question committee: Yes to HES organizers registered with the town clerk in March to advocate on behalf of Article 25, and A Better Way was formed in April to oppose it. Over the past two weeks, blue-and-white “yes” signs from Yes to HES and similar green-and-white “no” signs from A Better Way have appeared throughout town. Residents received a mailing this week from Yes to HES advocates, and one from opponents is expected soon.
This week Bill Marinelli, chairman of A Better Way, asked for time on Wednesday night’s Finance Committee agenda but was turned down by FinCom Chairman Don Ludwig. After polling members of the seven-member committee, Ludwig told Marinelli that the committee had no interest in reconsidering its decision to support the school proposal, as Ludwig confirmed in an email to the Press.
Best fiscal, educational value
Earlier at the Tuesday selectmen’s meeting, Schools Superintendent and SBC Chairwoman Linda Dwight spoke briefly about the project during public commentary, responding to recent criticism and urging its support. She defended the education plan, which has been criticized as a wish list that drove up the cost of renovating the school. The document had been written, she said, by herself and other professionals and teachers at HES and submitted to the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) before any of the proposed options had been developed. It had been approved by the School Committee, the MSBA, and the state’s Department of Education. She said that because the document reflected current and future educational best practices, it was likely a future committee of professionals would write a similar plan. Dwight said describing Harvard’s commitment to smaller class sizes persuaded the MSBA to go beyond its guidelines and reimburse the project for four classrooms per grade. Having the larger number of classrooms allows for future growth, she added.
Finally, Dwight said, the building committee had not been tasked with finding “the least expensive solution to the K-wing issues. “We believe we were asked to find the best long-term value for the town” that met educational requirements. “We believe the project is the best fiscal value for the town and the best educational value for the town.”
