Building committee reviews site and design options, discusses CTE integration and geothermal/solar systems

Project designers presented a set of alternative site and building schemes for Salem High School, describing differences in footprint, phasing, circulation and how Career and Technical Education (CTE) spaces would be integrated with academic classrooms.

Designers described multiple schemes presented in the meeting: a "mirror" (also referred to in discussion as "boomerang" or "ad-reno mirror") that reuses and stitches the existing field house into a new wing; a "loop" scheme that builds a new structure outside the existing footprint; a "wrapped" option that organizes CTE and performance spaces wrapped by classroom neighborhoods; and a compressed "S" or "Salem" scheme. Presenters said each option has trade-offs for access, loading, CTE adjacencies, daylighting and construction staging.

CTE placement and pedagogy were a recurring focus. Presenters and committee members discussed organizing CTE as integrated, visible elements within academic neighborhoods rather than relegating them to isolated basement spaces. "We're really beginning just to study... what happens if we wrap traditional classrooms around these CTE spaces, so that as you move through the building, you're always getting a sense of where CTE, where music, where the auditorium, where the gym is," a presenter said. Committee members and school staff said the integrated approach could help career pathways and make hands-on work visible to the student body.

Energy and mechanical systems were highlighted. The project team reported further study of a ground-source geo-exchange well field that could be sited under Horace Mann Field or in L-shaped arrangements near the north side of the building. Presenters recommended a hybrid approach combining ground-source and air-source heat pumps as the most economical and resilient option, and said they will continue to model energy performance. "One of the recommendations... is that we really move forward with a hybrid system," a presenter said.

Presenters noted constraints for co-location of photovoltaic arrays and geo wells: putting wells under parking complicates future photovoltaic-support structure installation. The team assumed roughly 40,000 square feet of PV in early modeling and said rooftop and parking-area PV will be necessary to approach zero-net-energy goals. Energy-modeling results presented compared the schemes' energy use intensities (EUI), with projected EUIs generally in a 25—6 range for the schemes modeled, a level the presenters described as reasonable for a CTE-inclusive high school.

Site circulation, drop-off and parking were discussed. Several schemes change the primary student and caregiver drop-off locations and propose relocating bus parking and adding temporary modular classrooms for phasing. Presenters said accessible upgrades to two existing athletic fields were included in estimates but could be removed as alternates to reduce cost. The team also reported strong community survey engagement: staff said they received 558 student surveys, 260 caregiver surveys and 29 teacher surveys; district staff reported about 99 staff responses for the middle and high school groups combined.

No formal selection of a preferred schematic occurred. The committee instructed staff to continue refining options in the PSR phase and to bring a recommended preferred schematic and more detailed phasing, energy and cost estimates for committee review.