Saugus officials tout benefits of Belmonte Middle School repair plans

SAUGUS – Speaking at a televised presentation on the Belmonte Middle School repair project Thursday night, Belmonte Principal Geoff Bruno said the repairs to the school will help teachers and students focus more on learning.?I look at my job as two parts, keeping kids safe and making sure they learn effectively,” said Bruno. “The more that I?m able to focus on kids learning the more effective we can be as a school. Certainly if you talk to teachers ? the amount of time they?ve put into making sure the kids were warm enough if the room was freezing ? they?re spending time and energy with things that aren?t directly related to classroom learning.”A day after the Massachusetts School Building Authority approved the final design and scope of the repair project, town officials and Saugus residents gathered in the Town Hall auditorium for a presentation on the project.The project has a current cost of $20 million and the MSBA will reimburse the town 53 percent of that.Repairs include improvements to the heating, air conditioning and plumbing systems, upgrades to the windows and building facade and new interior lighting along with electrical and energy efficiency improvements.?The facade of the building is uninsulated concrete,” said project manager Jim Dowd, of Skanska USA Building Inc. “The windows are uninsulated and original. Not only will it be energy efficient, but it will give it a completely fresh new look.”Superintendent Richard Langlois said with the school rapidly deteriorating over the years, maintenance to the building?s mechanical systems became harder and more costly.?The building is a 1960s building,” said Langlois. “The town has attempted over time to mitigate those problems ? and it became very costly and parts were hard to get.”School Committee Vice-chairman Tom Stewart went through the timeline of the project, which dated all the way back to 2001 when the initial project study was done.?It?s been almost a 10-year journey now to get us to this point,” said Stewart.Selectman Michael Serino attended the Belmonte School and noted the lack of handicap accessibility at the school.?Some parts of the school it?s nonexistent,” said Serino. “They will provide full handicap accessibility through the entire building. There will be huge major improvements.”Selectman Stephen Horlick said outdated telecommunications has made new technologies like the Internet, smart boards and kindles harder to use.?All that technology requires an infrastructure of cables, wires and routers and the school is becoming more and more difficult now to actually do that,” said Horlick. “Over the past years, the administration and the town has done a fabulous job trying to extend the life of this school, it?s becoming more and more difficult every year when all of these upgrades have to be done.”The project will be paid for if voters pass a debt exclusion, which would see the tax levy for the average-price home increase by around $60 starting in 2016 and steadily decreasing over the course of 20 years. The vote for this will be held in November.Matt Tempesta can be reached at [email protected]. You can follow him on Twitter at @MattTempesta.