Revere to expand rodent control plan

REVERE-School Superintendent Paul Dakin said the rodent control area around the Paul Revere School construction site will be expanded to meet neighbors? concerns about rats.?We upped the baiting program to cover more area,” Dakin said, adding workers will keep a construction fence around the project?s perimeter.Four hundred Paul Revere students are attending school in a section of the Beachmont School. Although it was reimbursed for 90 percent of the cost on other school building projects, changes in school building rules are forcing the city to combine loans, local tax dollars and a state grant to pay for the $18.5 million Paul Revere.Even as construction on a new Paul Revere School stretches into next year, Mayor Thomas Ambrosino is not making predictions about when the city?s next school construction project will start.Plans a year ago called for building a new McKinley School in 2011 but Ambrosino thinks 2012 or 2013 are more realistic timeframe given state concerns about paying for school construction projects across the state.?Given that the focus of the Massachusetts School Building Authority is now on the construction of the new Paul Revere School, I doubt that it will consider any funding for a new McKinley School until after Paul Revere is completed,” Ambrosino wrote in a letter to City Council members.Unlike relatively new schools like the Rumney Marsh, Whelan and Anthony schools, McKinley is a 105-year-old brick building attended by 444 students compared to 225 who went there in 2001.Dakin said the city plan to replace the McKinley assures students living in the city?s center enjoy the same benefits of a new school now available to students living in outlying neighborhoods.Dakin hopes to introduce an extended school day at McKinley even before designs for the new school are completed. The Whelan and Garfield Middle schools obtained $1.5 million in state money this year to offer a school day running from 8 a.m. to 3:45 p.m. The money covers the added cost of teachers salaries.McKinley teachers last winter applied for state “fast track” approval to lengthen the school day to 3:45 p.m. and provide additional English language and mathematics instruction as well tutoring and experimental learning.McKinley Administrator Elizabeth Anton would like to offer dance and music after school to students if extended day is approved. Dakin has proposed coupling extended day with after school programs by placing private after-school programs in all local schools.