PEABODY — Residents were introduced to the School Building Committee working on the new Peabody Veterans Memorial High School (PVMHS) building Wednesday night at the first public meeting for the project.
Mayor Ted Bettencourt, Superintendent Dr. Josh Vadala, committee chair Beverley Griffin Dunne, and PVMHS Principal Brooke Randall all took the time to speak on the project and made themselves available for questions from the public.
Emphasized during the meeting was the necessity of making the process open and transparent every step of the way.
This being the first step, the information presented to the public outlined what the next four to five years will look like, while specifics for the new building will become more concrete later down the road.
“This is such a historic project for us; it’s a big piece of the city… as we look to design the next high school, we’re designing it in mind for generations of Peabody residents to attend,” Dr. Vadala said. “We want to make sure that the facility is able to adapt and evolve.”
Important variables that are still up in the air include where on the high school’s campus the building will go, what sections of the current PVMHS can be refurbished instead of demolished, and the price tag for the project.
To increase the amount of financial support obtained from the state, the committee will work with the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) to build up reimbursement points through certain requirements like green initiatives or maintenance work.
“Every reimbursement point is millions of dollars, so we’re going to scratch and crawl for every reimbursement point we can get, just as we did for the Higgins and Welch school,” Bettencourt said.
Peabody was accepted into the MSBA’s Core Program in December 2023 on its seventh attempt at applying. Now, the city will have potentially 65% of the costs reimbursed.
Currently, PVMHS is in the eligibility phase of the MSBA’s program, which decides “what is the city of Peabody eligible for in terms of size, enrollment, and what not,” according to Dr. Vadala.
This will end in April of this year, when the project will move into the feasibility phase where an Owner’s Project Manager and an architect will be brought in to help parse out the size of the building and where it will be located.
Breaking ground on the new building is estimated to happen two years from now, which will, in turn, take another two to three years to complete construction.
The committee assured residents that they would maintain a line of communication with the public through every stage of the MSBA’s program. To that end, the city is creating a website to answer questions.
Additionally, the committee membership is made up of a diverse set of voices, with teachers, construction experts, city councillors, and parents all lending their time to construct the best possible building for the district.
“This building here was built in 1970… right now, it’s just not meeting the needs of our students,” Bettencourt said. “The technology, the science labs, the classrooms, it’s not working and the time has come for us to really look at a new school or a major renovation.”
Outdated equipment, energy inefficiency costing the city millions of dollars, and changes in 21st-century learning were all concerns that Bettencourt highlighted as reasons for the importance of this project.
The committee also sees this as an opportunity to expand the school’s vocational and technical capabilities, potentially keeping more students from going to Essex Tech in Danvers which costs the city $30,000 per student.
For example, Dr. Vadala illustrated an idea where they could build a restaurant for the culinary arts department to operate that could serve the community while educating students on jobs in the food industry.
Another possibility for PVMHS facilities the committee has discussed is not demolishing the auditorium and field house buildings, but instead redesigning and refurbishing them.
“When we think about keeping these spaces, we’re keeping the open space, and we can reimagine it to be anything we want,” Dr. Vadala said. “The possibilities are endless.”
Griffin Dunne, who also chaired the committees for the Welch Elementary renovation and the new Higgins Middle School building, gave the audience an idea of how exciting of a process this can be.
“This process is actually really fascinating. We will be meeting, we will be talking, we’re going to ask questions, we’re going to learn from the public… then we will sit down and work with architects,” she said. “In this process, you get to see everything from hopes and dreams to concrete.”
Some of those hopes were expressed Wednesday by residents in the crowd, who asked about plans for the school’s planetarium, if the school will utilize green energy, and what the renovated auditorium will look like.
While most of those questions don’t have an answer just yet, the committee members emphasized how important hearing those concerns is for the process and encouraged anyone interested in the process to continue raising their voices.
