SWAMPSCOTT — A former educator in the public school district says that the town’s elementary schools are unfit for the students that attend them, and that the only solution is to build the proposed town-wide elementary school.
Lois Longin is the district’s former curriculum director and before that, principal of Clarke and Hadley Elementary Schools. Longin said she knows from her years of experience that each of the three buildings is well past its expiration date.
“The teachers use bright colors to make it look good, but you take that special paper off the bulletin board and you look like you’re in a slum,” she said.
The oldest building, Hadley, was built in 1911, while the newest, Clarke, was built in 1952. This ranks Swampscott as having the fifth oldest elementary school buildings in the state.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the town had to make air quality improvements to each building in order to allow students back in, but Longin said this was not a new problem, and she knows of situations over the years where the air quality exacerbated or caused breathing problems in students and staff.
“It’s not just that it would be nice to have a new building so the kids can learn in a nice situation. It’s a health hazard,” Longin said. “I also know families who have left the district because they felt like they didn’t want to educate their child in this kind of environment.”
In addition to air quality, pests, leaks and other physical issues, Longin noted that the elementary schools are not big enough to serve the population there. Classes, especially special education programs, are sometimes taught in hallways, she said, because there aren’t facilities available.
They are also not technically proficient for a 21st-century education. While the district has spent lots of time and money to provide computers, the classrooms often don’t have more than two or three electrical outlets to support them.
Longin said that the obvious solution to these problems is to replace the buildings entirely with the proposed new elementary school.
The school would encompass all students from kindergarten to fourth grade in one building. Students from kindergarten to second grade will be in one wing, while older students would be in the other, and they would share certain amenities including a library and media center, art classrooms and a gymnasium.
Last week, the Massachusetts School Building Authority approved the project, offering $34 million in grant funding to the town, more than the administration had expected to receive. Even before that, the projected cost of the project had been brought down from the original estimate of $110 million to $97.5 million. Town Administrator Sean Fitzgerald expects it to cost the average single-family household just $1 per day.
Still, there is opposition to the school. Concerns raised by opponents include environmental issues, cost and traffic, but Longin believes the opponents don’t understand the lengths to which the School Building Committee has gone to mitigate those problems.
She also noted that the project would be a benefit even for those who no longer have elementary-aged children by raising property values. She said that when she sold her former home in Marblehead that was across the street from the newly-built Glover School, the offers poured in from families wanting to take advantage.
“I put it on the market and I had, within one day, 10 offers, all of them way over asking price,” she said. “There was no way it would’ve gotten the kind of money it did if it wasn’t for the new school right there.”
Meanwhile, Longin worries about her grandchildren, two of whom currently attend Hadley and one who will soon be old enough to attend.
“I think the staff is phenomenal. I’ve worked with teachers in all three buildings and I have felt a real sense of camaraderie,” she said. “I can’t imagine how outstanding the school system could be if they had the right tools.”
Tréa Lavery can be reached at [email protected].
