An overview of the project for a new Wellington School

• Based successful debt exclusion and Town Meeting votes in June, the Wellington Building Committee has entered an intensive phase of designing the new Wellington School. The scheduled meetings for the remainder of July and August 2009 meetings is shown below.
• A traffic study was conducted immediately upon  passage of the debt exclusion.  Its results will inform the overall site planning and traffic flows as the project design is finalized.
• A public hearing about the project, design alternatives, and traffic and site issues was held on Thursday, July 16th. Approximately 40 residents attended the hearing and were given the opportunity to give feedback, questions, and concerns to the Wellington Building Committee.
• During the Fall of 2009, the Building Committee will make every effort to finalize the project an d obtain all necessary local permits and approvals in time to put the project out to bid by December of this year.  If this goal can be met, the bid process will take place during a period when construction bids are expected to be lower than they would be in a later period as the economy's expected recovery begins to accelerate.
• On March 25, 2009, the Board of the  Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) unanimously voted to award $12. 4 million in state funds towards construction of a new Wellington School.  Total project costs are estimated to be no more than $39.7 million, including temporary relocation of students, site preparation, and up-front energy-saving "green" costs.  The Wellington Building Committee will continue to look for ways to reduce the cost below this maximum figure.
• The new Wellington will be a 5-track school (5 classrooms per grade, plus special-needs space) of approximately 84,000 square feet, for a maximum of 575 students.
• The new building will be designed to address some current overcrowding issues at all the elementary schools; provide more space for special-needs programs, some of which allow the School Department to keep children in Belmont whom they might otherwise send out-of-district at substantially higher cost; and provide additional capacity as elementary enrollments increase.