Medford officials narrow high school rebuild to six options; MSBA review and a June decision loom

Jenny opened the third community meeting for the Medford High School project to summarize progress: the project team has reduced an earlier set of 29 options to six and is now in the preferred schematic report phase, she said.

Matt Rice of SMMA described the six alternatives selected by the building committee on March 23 and walked attendees through what will be produced during the PSR phase: more detailed floor plans and vertical sections, site plans and traffic studies, earthwork and rock-removal estimates, phasing diagrams, and a life-cycle analysis that combines operational and embodied carbon assessments.

On schedule, Rice said the preferred schematic report is due to the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) on June 25. "These comments are critical for the project team as it will start to outline what the MSBA views as an ineligible or an ineligible portion of the building for reimbursement," he said, adding that an MSBA board meeting later this summer would confirm what the MSBA will reimburse and what the city may need to cover in a debt-exclusion vote.

The six alternatives range from a code-repair baseline (labeled a 0.1) to several addition/renovation scenarios (b 1.2, c 2.2, c 3.4) and two new-construction options (including d 2.1 on Edgerly Field). Rice described the code-repair alternative as a baseline: it would replace mechanical and electrical systems, add seismic bracing and bring exterior fenestration and insulation up to current energy and accessibility codes. "If we just keep going on the notion of what we're fixing ... we have to replace the entirety of the mechanical system, the entirety of the electrical system because those do not meet current energy codes," he said.

Rice cautioned that the baseline repair option, as scoped, would not meet the district's educational plan and therefore might not be eligible for MSBA reimbursement; he said any parts that do not align with the educational plan could fall entirely on local taxpayers. (The meeting transcript included inconsistent numeric references to a total dollar figure in the code-repair description; the project team is expected to provide clarified cost estimates during upcoming meetings.)

Among the renovation options, Rice highlighted b 1.2, which preserves much of the existing structure to reuse embodied carbon while adding two stories in key wings and reconfiguring interior spaces to match the educational plan. Several renovation scenarios rely on temporary modular classrooms to maintain instruction during construction; Rice said designs that work away from the existing footprint (for example, the d 2.1 option on Edgerly Field) can reduce or eliminate the need for modulars.

Rice said that MSBA rules limit the size of new gym spaces and require that a pool be built as a physically detached project if the district pursues an all-new-construction path; the pool would also require a separate debt-exclusion ballot question so voters can approve pool funding independently of the main school question. "We can put those two ballot questions on the same ballot, but they have to be individual questions," he said.

Project milestones the team flagged include a building committee meeting on April 27 to review program and square footage, a May 20 meeting to present updated comparative cost data from two independent estimators, and a June 10 committee meeting to select a preferred alternative that will move into schematic design.

What happens next: the building committee is expected to select a preferred option in June, the team will finalize the preferred schematic report for MSBA review by June 25, and an MSBA board decision this summer will determine the MSBA reimbursement share and, in turn, the likely tax impact for Medford residents. The project website and a series of videos for each option will continue to serve as public resources for details and visualizations.