Good evening and welcome to Byline. We're here at the Amherst Media Studio and this show is co-sponsored by the Amherst League of Women Voters and Amherst Media. We're taking a break from our usual format in that we have an important conversation that is beginning and accelerating here in the community around the question of school construction for our elementary school children. And so we're doing a two-part series. Tonight February 8th is the first part and on Monday evening the 11th will be the second part and that show will feature our town council president and the chair of the Amherst School Committee. But tonight we have the chair and one of the two vice chairs of the Fort River School Building Study Committee. Is that roughly the right title of that? Yes. Very good. So thank you very much for being here. So we have Jonathan Salvan who's the chair of the committee and we have Maria Kopicki who is one of the two vice chairs and what we'd like to do is to help the community understand what your mission is, how you came to be, what you're doing, how far along are you. So let's just start with how did you get created and what is your charge? So we were created by a town meeting in March of 2017. We've been actively meeting as a committee since October of 2017 and so we're a little over a year into our process of doing this feasibility study. And the feasibility study is of? We are exploring the Fort River School Building Site and the building itself and looking at what's basically feasible with this building when it comes to or building an site when it comes to what you can do. What range of things can you do on this site for the students and teachers of Amherst? Yeah, in May when town meeting voted to approve this the superintendent and the school committee had come to town meeting and said look we'd like you to we'd like this site and school to be studied and see what we can do and that's exactly what we've been doing since October and so we have done site analysis, we've done building analysis and we've come up with multiple options on how you can build a school at the Fort River site for the range enrollment is 315 to 465 students and as directed by the school committee and yeah we have five different options that meet all of those criteria. Very good and is it just looking at architectural and engineering type of elements or are there other pieces to this puzzle? Certainly there are other pieces to the puzzle in that broad span of time that we've been working as a committee we've really only been working with the designers since about August prior to that we were contracting for geotechnical borings we were getting a survey underway we did some air quality testing did I miss anything? Those are those are kind of the big pre meeting with designer steps that we've taken and then once we hire the designers we worked with them initially to work on a draft educational program which Maria alluded to that's how we kind of got to our target population there was certainly guidance from the school committee that it was pre-k through six and mostly three sections or intended to be three sections per grade but it involved talking the designers and members of the committee speaking with educational staff members to find out what would need to be in this building so to do basically a space summary and largely that would be how we developed the educational plan what we were doing in our process was largely mirroring the initial phases of a feasibility study that would have been would be conducted with the MSBA so in addition to that educational component we and the geotechnical and survey and and air quality testing once we had designers on board we then they didn't then had their consultants to extensive analysis of the structure of all the engineering components and we are at the point right now where they have developed out a total of six design options that range from completely new construction to various degrees of renovation plus a code upgrade option and we're in the midst of still working on cost estimates that's a long process but we've made a great deal of progress to show what could you do and the nature of the final product work product of the committee is a report is a feasibility study report feasibility study report and it will detail what is possible on the site and a variety of visions for what a building on that site might look like that's correct and it's pegged around a student body that's roughly the size of the current student body or is it larger it's slightly increased you know today you know the school population at Fort Rivers have shifted over time but today not all grades have three sections most of them are in fact two sections but we knowing what was happening within the school system we anticipated that with the dual language program starting up that in all likelihood a more realistic population for Fort River would in fact be three sections per grade and just to touch a little bit on something that Maria mentioned a moment ago while we're you know this was our committee was created kind of between MSBA processes and so we're not we're not actively engaged in one as part of our work but we modeled that process and tried to focus on how a feasibility study would be conducted and looked at if it were MSBA process so that we would have that best comparable data to the data that town already had on the other site that's been looked at and the other site being the Wildwood site yeah so for our listeners there was a study a similar study done earlier and that was at the with regard to the Wildwood site so by doing this study both of those sites will be essentially in the same position in terms of the community considering what could take place on each of those sites yeah the previous the previous study did consider the Fort River site as a possible location as well however the Fort River school had not been extensively studied and there hadn't been as detailed work at the Fort River site I see okay and is that because we learned something from having done that previous study that we needed to go deeper or what what what changed in terms of why why why do we go deeper on Fort River than why it had it had not been studied as to the same level I say so they are now kind of caught up when this when your work is completed and the report is submitted they will truly be on equal footing with regard to considering each of those sites yes yeah so and varying options to to look at yeah good and so uh this is not wasted effort in view of the fact that we have another process going absolutely not I mean I think we're we're we're producing an array of data to put it in those kind of terms that that should be applicable to any process that we go through next as a community you know whether it is something very technical like a geotechnical report or something a little bit more design oriented about how how do you adapt an open classroom building so let's see you're an architect and a parent yes and you're a former medical professional you're a doctor yes and you're now a scientist you're in a lab at Amherst college and you have children yes Eric Nakajima is on the committee as well he's he's the chair of our regional school committee and he's the other co-vice chair yeah sort of yes yes of your panel who are the other members oh I hope I don't miss anyone I'm sure we will they are sure because it would be helpful for the community to know what kinds of minds are at the table and also if you happen to know them and you have an opinion and you bump into them at the grocery store you you know who to talk to well Dr. Morris sits in the committee in a non-voting capacity um and as a superintendent of schools Diane Chamberlain the principal of Fort River uh sits on our campaigner sits on our committee and is a voting member and every now and a while so I'll mention this is a voting member we have another parent of a Fort River or two more parents of Fort River students Heather Shelton and Allison Page we have a school staff person Benjamin Harrington sorry um who am I forgetting now and our great big oh we have another parent in the school system a parent who has a child or children um at Wildwood that's arena thank you I can't do that pronunciation quite as well as you can um we have a uh we have Rudy Perkins who uh is is feeling a role sort of as an expert in or I don't know if the right word is expert at least a person with a background in in the zero energy perspective uh and Anthony Delaney who's a procurement officer for the town and we for the town and uh the the various roles that that people are filling were defined by the school committee when they formed it and so they wanted somebody with uh to represent the town financial financial we do have a couple open seats um for for much of our work uh the town um the facilities uh director participated but that's an open opens well I think it's been recently filled but that's been an open slot um and we don't currently have an active faculty member as part of our committee but that is yet it will be filled refilled presumably I mean part of this depends on how quickly they fill the roles and how much longer we're active as a committee so so let's talk about community engagement uh because that's obviously an important part of uh any process here in town so you you will reach a point at which you will go to the public and I understand you've reached that point we have reached and uh tell us about what uh what that program looks like and how people engage with you well certainly anyone is always welcome to come to work one of our committee meetings and that's an opportunity held and where they're typically Wednesdays and they're typically at the police station community room they're not every Wednesday they're usually every other Wednesday so we just met this Wednesday we'll meet again probably in two weeks is there a website or something yes there is a website yeah that we have a website that's linked through the the town website you can find us there so go to the town website and and we have we have made every effort to get as all of our information up there so all of our documents are up there our minutes and thank you to Amherst media and volunteers for Amherst media who we arranged to have film all of our meetings and so that is people can tune in beautiful but people can watch those on Amherst media YouTube or on their website yes and and you probably don't have that up on the town website right there's links to it through links okay terrific so you can catch up if you're new to town or if you've decided it's caught your attention and you want to go back and view some of them you can see all of the meetings from the beginning that's correct beautiful so talk some more about the engagement process that you're launching at this point coming up next week on the 13th February 13th at 6 30 we're holding a community meeting in the middle school auditorium to kind of again do a little bit of what we're doing tonight kind of present the the history of the committee what we've been working on and to get feedback on the work product of our feasibility study are we asking the right questions are we gathering the right information have we looked at the right things so that's on the 13th that's on the 13th we are planning to hold one more we're still working on a final time and date and we'll we will post that very soon as soon as we get a chance to finalize and in the meantime they can also the public can also attend your meetings and and follow the progress there do you have a public comment period we do it's typically fairly early in the early meeting yeah although we have entertained questions during during our meetings as well from the public the other thing is that we have been to one pgo one of the elementary school pgos and we'll be presenting it the other two and are happy to come speak to anybody very good and how can people most constructively contribute to the conversation how much of this is technical how much of this is what i want for my child or my theory of education how do how do they constructively contribute to this work right given your charge why don't think it's particularly technical what we want to know is is are we thinking confirm that we were thinking about the right things looking at the right items to provide the best information to the town and make sure that we're as compatible and as as equal as you kind of talked earlier about where we're bringing the information on fort river to where the information was in the wildwood project very good any additional thoughts on that um yeah i mean i think the the we would love to hear from any members of the public i think what we are tasked to do is to answer two questions can you build on this site and tell us what you could do with the school of the sign this size um and i think we we're answering those two questions the answer is yes and come see the different options and and please tell us what you think about them and tell us what you think about any other parts of the process because we will be incorporating that information into our final product so uh upon completion of your public engagement component you will be taking all of those comments and and everything that you've learned into consideration and you will then be working to produce a final product do you have an estimated timetable for completing the work we need to sit down with our design team and and actually establish that final timeline i don't think we're terribly far off um but most of the the writing work will will be done by the design professionals um and so we do have to have a conversation with them um about what that that timetable should look like so uh the uh effort that's being made by the school committee in relation to uh superintendent morris's uh concept that he put on the table i'm trying not to use the word proposal because it makes it feel like there's a school that we're talking about he has established parameters these are the five or six key things that he hopes the community will come to general agreement about so that the community will rally behind those concepts and get us to the school building assistance program and then come back to the community with a green light from him from the school building assistance program to proceed with the feasibility and moving to actually talking about specific school in a specific place of a specific size and design etc so um your their timetable uh as i understand it is that they will uh the school committee will finish its work in the middle of march the town council at the beginning of april so that we can meet an april 12 deadline at school building assistance let's overlay what you think might be happening with your timetable in relation to that where do you think for example you folks might be in your process approximately april one we'll be finishing up i mean we'll be getting there i would anticipate we are going to have to meet more um and finalize the budget discussion um we need to have some final conversations about what the consultants found in their analysis of the existing building and site um but in the end our work is going to inform that that sort of next conversation um because we're again more than this current conversation it's going to be the next conversation because that's where that comparison that that that the dual use or mutual use of data is going to be valuable at least that's that's my perspective that's how you see it yeah our job was really our job is to provide information and we're putting some fine points on it i think we largely have um that information we're going to be fine tuning it um getting it as accurate as we can but um so it's important for the community to understand that your information gatherers digesters and reporters as opposed to making specific recommendations the recommendations come later as a result of sba saying and really another process and a whole different process like using your information as part of that process that's right that's terrific so sometime this spring probably we're going to see a report come out of out of the committee where does the report go so we we take our work we present it to the school committee um and that's really the sunset of our our committee it's work um you know obviously if there are edits we need to make that we will do that but um we don't go past this feasibility study level very good any additional thought on that maria um uh we have heard some questions from town council that you know they might be interested in hearing our work and we are obviously you know that's so the town the new body our new legislature so that would make sense for you to come to make a presentation there at some point yeah we um our our task was to report to the school committee but it certainly makes sense to to talk to whoever wants to hear the information that we've gathered do you uh think that members of your panel are going to uh be consciously and actively engaged in the public process that's going on with the school committee and the town council at this point with regard to the bigger picture or are people so focused on this task and there's so much work to be done that you think people are mostly going to stay on task here as opposed to uh trying to engage in in the other part I mean as committee members well either as committee members or as residents of the community I think as committee members we need to focus on our task because we do have a bit of work to do and everyone's got their own opinions and I can't say you know as the chair whether people engage at certain levels at that other process great are there other comments or things that my questions haven't elicited that should be put on the table so that the viewers can understand more about what you're doing if not then I'm going to take us off in a slightly different direction but I want to make sure that we've covered the entire terrain of what you need to and hope to communicate to our neighbors here in town with regard to your effort I think you've done a good job in capsules yeah so um we have a you know another five minutes or so so I'd like to explore with you a little bit if if you have some thoughts as parents in town of what the nature of a of a school building should be going forward right because we've lived with these schools for 50 years uh as far as I know everybody I've ever met is an expert on education because we all got one that's true and so um it's really a challenge to get outside of your own experience and think about what education the education for the future looks like and therefore what our buildings should be looking like so I'm assuming you had some conversation about that in this process and I'm curious whether you can share any of that without you know this isn't positions of the committee it's just some observations about what a school building of the future needs to be able to do or accommodate or look like well it's interesting you know during our process one of the first things that that that we talked about is how how do we need to be guided and we came up with a list of non-negotiable items that we had heard and I think that I'd like to stay with yeah how the committee looks at it um um we were tasked with finding a solution to the building problems that solve a number of issues eliminating open classroom design making sure that there is good acoustics good air quality natural light accessibility safety um I'm uh oh uh providing cost estimates that consider all the costs that would be involved including operational costs help me out Jonathan I feel like I'm missing some well we have to hit the net zero net zero by being compliant so life cycle costing of operating the building which would include the energy and also what you know this this would be the first building that we municipal building that would be complying with with the net zero by law and there's all a lot of decision making and options that go into that and so we've explored that deeply um and that I think guided us through this process so that the options that we are providing meet all of those criteria um so we have three buildings in town that were built that I'm remembering in the last five years or so the Hitchcock Center for the Environment the um design building the over design building at UMass and a building at Hampshire College which were all net zero uh I think the UMass one was net zero energy but at least all three of them involved wood construction which is going it's what is that back to the future where you know everything used to be built with wood and then we went to brick and then it's a lot of steel etc um was there any discussion about the types of materials that might be used in the construction of school or alternative construction methods that are forward looking rather than what you would traditionally see in a public school building so I'm going to put on my architects hat because during during the day that is my day job um and and say no we didn't and and didn't get into quite that level of detail um primarily because we are a feasibility study committee and some of those decisions really come come later um but kind of thinking both as an architect and as a parent um and as a parent I'm just kind of blown away by the quality of the the teaching that gets done in our schools regardless of their of their condition I mean I think we have a fabulous set of professionals in this community um but getting back to what Maria was saying about you know light filled um non open um I do personally like the notion of of wood and you know but there are a wide range of of aesthetics that achieve the goal of a modern 21st century school but they tend to be decisions that are further downstream not just of our feasibility study but but of any any project that's something that the architects would kind of present to the community um you know and and walk through the community through what does your school really want to feel and be like um and it it gets to a lot more than just okay how many boxes of classrooms that are x y z size um and so in in reality there's there's an amazing opportunity the community has as part of a new building ultimately to affect uh just the sort of things you've been talking about yeah one of the reasons that we picked the designers that we did to help us with this is that they had that perspective and they they are very conscious of the kind of materials in addition they have experience not only renovating open classrooms but also they have deep experience with green energy and with net zero and so um they brought that to the table a lot of those other those fine much more fine-tuned decisions are something that would happen far later in a building process more in schematic design but they certainly our designers certainly approached it with an eye toward that it was very interesting to me because i had some involvement with the design building because they had designed a traditional construction and then john over um said how can you build a building that is going to house our natural resources programs without considering wood at this point and uh he convinced the university and i i worked with them to uh do the transition from where they were to the it was only uh they had to do some redesign but they were able to do the construction costs as i understand it within the existing budget that they had done so it's not a wild it's not a totally wild crazy thing and we are a forested state about somewhere around somewhere i'm going to say it's 40 to 60 of our land is forested and that'd be really interesting to see if we could add over time to this momentum around natural design and construction and with that i want to thank you both for being with us and i want to thank all of our listeners for watching tonight so remember this is a two-part series on a monday evening you will see the second part of this conversation about our conversation here in town about building new schools for our children and we'll have uh lind greece move the town council president and anastasia ordinez who is the school committee chair will continue this conversation and talk about their process leading to a decision on filing an application potentially on april 12 for another round so hope you'll all engage in this process it's a second bite at the apple we have another chance to go back to the school building assistance program in boston and get our fair share of state funds to improve school building here in our town and we want to thank you guys for your service on the fort river of building planning study committee something like that and uh thank you all again for being with us thank you have a good night