Revere school board finalizing plans to shift students to new buildings

LYNN-The Paul Revere School’s 400 students would start the next academic year at the Beachmont School in August under a plan in its final stages of review by the School Committee.School Superintendent Paul Dakin said the plan should be completed by February and March. It calls for Beachmont students to free up space for their Paul Revere counterparts by moving into the newly completed Rumney Marsh Academy in late August.Rumney Marsh is a new middle school under construction next to the high school and American Legion Highway. It is the third public school built in the city in as many years with construction of the Whelan and Susan Anthony Schools completed in 2006.The city has given state School Building Authority officials a commitment to build the new Paul Revere by mid-summer 2009 in time to open the new school for the 2009-2010 school year.Meeting the deadline will require the city to start work on the school this year. Before work can start the city needs to take six land parcels through a legal process called eminent domain.Ambrosino told City Councilors in December he hopes to meet with Authority representatives this winter and get a sense of what percentage of the Paul Revere project’s $20 million cost will be reimbursed by the state.By contract, the West Revere building housing the new Whelan School and the Susan Anthony middle school cost $38 million and the price tag for Rumney Marsh is $31.8 million to date.The city also wants to build a new McKinley School by 2011 but Dakin said the school has a more pressing need. He wants to reduce the number of students attending McKinley and Whelan by redrawing the neighborhood boundary lines dictating where children across the city attend school.”Whelan is at capacity and McKinley is over capacity. This is something we predicted that is coming to fruition,” he said.