Architect: Saugus needs master plan for schools

SAUGUS – Saugus needs a master plan for its public schools before it can move ahead with a plan to renovate or replace the town’s high school, an architect told the school committee Thursday.Edward Frenette, of engineering firm Symmes, Maini & McKee Associates, took the Saugus School Committee through the long process of designing and building a new school, which would take place under the auspices of the Massachusetts School Building Authority.”You can’t go to the MSBA and say, ‘I want a new high school,'” said Frenette. “The feasibility study determines what you get. The first phase you determine what your problem is and do a thorough analysis and assessment of the facility.”Frenette said a master plan for the district is key.”The master plan can take in your entire district,” said Frenette. “If the thing in the worst shape is the high school, then you want to make sure the scope of the master plan gets you the right data so you can write a statement of interest.”School committee member Arthur Grabowski said the committee should be focusing on writing the statement of interest instead of looking further down the process.”We should be putting all our efforts into the SOI right now,” said Grabowski. “Nothing has happened in the last four months.”Superintendent Richard Langlois disagreed.”We’re having a meeting right now with a specialist, and the only document we have to work off of is from 2002,” he said, referring to the schools’ 10-year-old master plan. “How do you answer a question if there are no facts? And there are no current facts. Before we draft something on paper, what can I read and study to inform what I’m going to do?”School committee Chairman Wendy Reed noted that the window for filing a statement of interest through the MSBA is not open yet.”We can’t write it,” she said. “There’s no window to write it. The application is online. We don’t have a blank application. It doesn’t work like that.”Grabowski said they should still be compiling information to be able to “plug it in” when the application becomes available.Reed said it took four months to write the statement of interest for the Belmonte Middle School repair and noted the window generally opens in January.The committee voted to request the town Building Committee review the 2002 report and voted to develop a request for proposals to update the report.Matt Tempesta can be reached at [email protected].