Salem committee reviews draft educational plan, space summary for new high school and readies MSBA submission

On Feb. 24, 2025, the Salem School Committee examined a draft educational plan and a four-page space summary that will accompany a preliminary design program (PDP) submittal to the Massachusetts School Building Authority for a proposed new Salem High School.

The documents, prepared by the district's project management team and design consultant Perkins and Will, outline programmatic goals tied to the district's Portrait of a Graduate and include detailed room-by-room net floor areas. Margaret Wood, a project management team member, said the educational program is intended to be “both aspirational and particular” and to show “how the district aspires to teach, how to teach, and how a new building might facilitate that.”

Why it matters: The draft lays out the district's priorities for career and technical education (CTE), performing arts, science labs, inclusive student supports and flexible teaching spaces, and establishes a baseline size for a new facility. Brooke Trivers of Perkins and Will described the current draft as a “compressed slide of the very lengthy … program” and said the draft shows roughly 280,000 square feet of net usable space; using a typical grossing factor pushes the building toward about 420,000 gross square feet.

Committee members and the design team spent much of the discussion on program adjacencies, CTE shop space needs, performing-arts facilities and student supports that require appropriately sized and sited rooms. District staff emphasized flexible classrooms, multiple exhibition spaces to showcase student work, and expanded CTE and technical-shop spaces that in some cases are currently retrofitted from standard classrooms. School staff said existing engineering and electrical spaces were adapted to meet program needs but are not purpose-built for current demand.

On performing arts, design staff said the proposed auditorium would seat about 690 people and that the proposed stage was increased to about 35 feet by 80 feet to better support musical productions and backstage technical education. The design team noted the MSBA guideline for auditoriums tends to produce smaller houses, and that larger auditoriums are possible but would be an added, district-funded choice.

The team proposed an 18,000-square-foot large field house to accommodate multiple practice courts and competition needs; Perkins and Will flagged that the MSBA guideline for a gymnasium is smaller and that the draft increases that area to meet program expectations. Typical general classrooms in the draft are 900 square feet; science labs are shown at 1,440 square feet per MSBA standards. District staff said Salem High enrollment recently climbed from about 798 students a few years ago to roughly 970–980 this year and that projections indicate a likely exceedance of 1,000 students next year.

Designers and staff discussed inclusive facilities. Perkins and Will confirmed the draft will include all-gender restrooms and changing areas and said the exact configuration (single-stall all-gender toilets, multi-stall arrangements, or other options) remains to be determined in further design conversations.

The draft includes programmatic spaces for special education, a Hawthorne program for students transitioning from hospitalization, a Connect for Success ninth-grade support program, career and college counseling spaces, and an Educator Learning Lab for teacher professional learning. Staff emphasized adjacency — locating supports close to core instruction — as a priority for inclusion and cohesion in the building.

Multiple committee members asked for more input from students and the public. The district noted that more than 550 survey responses informed the draft and that school-visit observations of recently built high schools shifted thinking on what new facilities can enable. The design and project teams proposed scheduling tours of other district high schools and new construction projects for committee members and staff.

Next steps: The building committee will review the full PDP and other due-diligence materials at an upcoming meeting; the Salem School Committee agreed to return this item for further discussion at the March 17 meeting before formal submission to the MSBA. Margaret Wood and Brooke Trivers said the documents remain drafts and that changes—especially potential changes to auditorium size—are easier to address now than later in the process.

Quotes used with attribution come only from people identified in the meeting record. No MSBA decision or final design was announced at the meeting; district and design staff characterized the materials as preparatory and subject to revision.