Marblehead school board OKs borings testing on Glover site

MARBLEHEAD – Four members of the School Committee unanimously supported spending up to $23,500 of the Glover School project contingency fund on test borings that will help determine what school design the Glover School Building Committee goes forward with.Wednesday morning’s meeting took less than 20 minutes. The Glover School vote was the only item on the agenda.The vote means that JCJ Architecture can move quickly on this step of the project and make the test borings adjacent to the present school building before school resumes. The borings represent two to three days work, according to architect Greg Smolley and Owners Project Manager Patrick Saitta, but they represent a safety and class disruption issue.The building committee had $24,956 in its contingency fund to cover the cost.Committee member Kathy Leonardson’s motion was seconded by Eurim Chun and supported by Jonathan Lederman and Patricia Blackmer. Blackmer chairs the School Committee and Glover School Building Committee.Blackmer stressed that the borings will allow the town to go forward with its present design or adapt a Massachusetts School Building Authority model school design to the Glover site.”The money won’t be wasted,” she said. “We need the borings anyway.”When Lederman questioned the adaptability of the model school designs, Superintendent of Schools Paul Dulac showed him information sheets and designs for all four MSBA model elementary schools, presently available on the MSBA Web site.Dulac will still be searching the school budget for an additional $70,600 for the remainder of the model school study work and he will be asking the town for assistance as well. For example, a town backhoe could be used to dig a test pit at the Glover site.