Winchester consultants present Morocco Elementary master-plan option with preschool and possible central office; committee questions enrollment assumptions

SMMA consultants presented a preliminary master-plan for a new Morocco Elementary School to the EFPBC on the hottest day of the year, laying out a K–5 building, four preschool classrooms and optional central office space and estimating roughly 88,000 gross square feet for the combined program.

Rosemary Park, an architect and educational planner with SMMA, said the 88,000 figure was a preliminary gross‑floor‑area estimate and that the design team was working at a high level: "the proposed, with the number of classrooms, the preschool, and central office would be a total GFA of about 88,000 square feet," she said, adding that the numbers will be refined during feasibility.

The presentation prompted detailed questions about enrollment assumptions. A committee member questioned the UMass Dartmouth projections, saying, "I think there's a strong view that the projection numbers that came from the UMass Dartmouth enrollment study are way overstated." SMMA said the Donahue study was the best available data and that the master plan would show high and low scenarios, plus a local‑policy footnote that Winchester typically plans at 20 pupils per classroom while MSBA guidance uses 23.

SMMA showed options for siting a two‑story building outside the current FEMA flood zone and noted the town's culvert work may change the mapped floodplain. Park pointed to a placeholder ~44,000 sq ft footprint that would keep primary play areas at higher elevations and leave athletic fields at lower elevations; she cautioned that hard siting, survey and traffic studies would occur in feasibility.

Committee members also debated whether to include the district's central office inside the Morocco project. SMMA clarified MSBA rules allow inclusion of administrative space but do not reimburse for it; one committee member summarized the governance point: the school committee "will vote the program," and that decision, not the master plan alone, will determine whether central office is added.

SMMA and committee members agreed on next steps: SMMA will add clearer footnotes on capacity assumptions (MSBA vs. local class‑size policy), confirm whether recent temporary work at Morocco is intended to be permanent, validate counts of modular classrooms, and provide draft cost estimates and a refined program for feasibility. The EFPBC plans to use the master plan to frame an RFP for feasibility services; the memo reviewed in the meeting projects functional program development by July 2027 and notes feasibility and MSBA reviews will further refine scope and budgets.

The committee closed the meeting after a brief administrative motion to adjourn; members scheduled the next meeting for Monday the 13th at Lynch.