Lynn school board members hopeful on Pickering funding

LYNN – A second walk-through with state officials has left School Committee members feeling cautiously optimistic that Pickering Middle School could be in the mix for state funding in 2014.”Honestly I thought it was really positive,” said School Committee member John Ford. “If I felt we were just being patronized, I’d say so, but I really felt in talking to (School Building Authority Executive Director) John McCarthy and (SBA spokesman) Matt Donovan there was a positive feeling.”School officials learned earlier this month that Pickering Middle School would “not be invited” into the school project review process for 2013.School Committee member Charles Gallo said there is no appeals process for being passed over for funding, so officials reached out to the state and asked for a second chance to show why a new school is needed. Ford, Gallo, School Committee member Rick Starbard, along with Superintendent Catherine Latham, Inspectional Services Director Michael Donovan, Lynn Teacher’s Union President Brant Duncan and nearly a dozen other city and school officials conducted the second tour.Starbard said he was not surprised when the letter came down from the state excluding Pickering from the 2013 funding list.”I didn’t really expect to be on the list this year. We’re just getting the Marshall ball rolling,” he said.The city has already received approval to build a new $92 million Marshall Middle School and the groundbreaking is slated for early 2014. Lynn Vocational Technical Institute and Breed Middle School have also benefited from the state’s green funding and received new windows and a roof, respectively.Gallo said he spoke to Matt Donovan prior to the second tour and the SBA spokesman indicated that essentially the state has to spread the wealth around.Matt Donovan has described the authority’s review process for funding school repair or new construction as a competitive process that pits 201 “statement of interests” against one another.”But we know the need is here, so we’re going to advocate for our schools,” Gallo said. “I’m cautiously optimistic.”Like Ford, Starbard said he felt the second visit went well.”We had a good chat and (McCarthy) was pretty honest and forthcoming in describing the process and how the funding goes, and I think something will get done, maybe not this year but by the end of next year,” he said.Built in 1917, Pickering is plagued by cracked plaster, overcrowding and age, Ford said.”They understood a little more about what we’re trying hard to do,” he said. “We’re just running out of classrooms.”The largest concern among the trio is that the city cannot wait eight years, the typical construction cycle from funding to ribbon cutting, to build another school.”There has been one new school built in my lifetime, Classical,” Gallo said. “We can’t keep waiting a decade between schools.””We have four schools to do, at eight years per school, it will be 2040 before we get there,” Ford said. “We can’t wait that long.”Ford also pointed out that while the schools are hoping to replace Cobbet and Tracy elementary schools, along with Marshall and Pickering, they are not the only schools in trouble.”We haven’t even mentioned Aborn yet,” he said. “It’s over 100 years old, the stairs are steep, the corridors narrow, there are a lot of things wrong, but it’s still standing.”Ford said he gives ISD Director Michael Donovan a lot of credit for keeping the city’s 27-plus schools in good repair.Despite the funding setback, Starbard said there are ways the city can still move forward on the Pickering project.”We can start looking at where a new Pickering is going to go,” he said. “If the state asked, we couldn’t give that answer today, so there are things we can be doing.”Gallo said they will find out how successful the second tour of the school was when the next funding round is announced in 2014.