Education Facilities

Question: A few years back, the Gardner Elementary School had been built, and there were needs at the middle school, there were needs at the high school. What’s happened since?

Answer: Well, the elementary school has been built and is in full operation right now, so it’s great to see that our students are there learning in a 21st century learning environment. It’s the first school that’s been designed and constructed for elementary school students since the early 1900s when Prospect Street School was built, but if you look at Waterford Street, it was built originally as the middle school. If you look at Helen Mae Sauter and Elm Street School, those were originally built as Gardner High School and Mount Wachusett Community College. So this was the first elementary school designed as an elementary school for well over 100 years. The middle school, we’ve installed new lockers, so our students can actually utilize the lockers that are over there. Additionally, we’re doing some work right now to replace the storefront and the roof at the middle school. Over at the high school, there’s been a lot of work done to renovate Landry Auditorium to make it so that it’s a more feasible space with better acoustics. Lachance Gymnasium had a full redo over there, too. We’re working on replacing the stair treads and the locker rooms at the high school, too, improving our athletic facilities. We’ve improved the practice fields and made it so that they’re a little more level and easier to practice and installed a new varsity baseball field over at Gardner High School and made improvements to that. There’s a new storage shed and snack shack over at Watkins Field, so we were able to fully finish and wrap out the Watkins Field renovation project. There’s a lot that’s happened with our school facilities, and I’m really excited to see how our students utilize those new opportunities and kind of run with it.

Question: You forgot about the $8 million. The budget for the Gardner Elementary School had a certain amount of loans taken out, came in under, so you had money to use, had to be 30-year projects. Tell us how that helps the city.

Answer: Well, that again helps us get through these capital projects. Now, the money is very restricted. By law, it can only be used for 30-year projects. By 30-year projects, there’s different statutes and state laws that say what’s considered 30 years and what’s not. So, for instance, equipment is not considered 30 years, paving is not considered 30 years. So it had to go toward basically building and facilities upgrades. That’s when, you know, I just mentioned the stair treads at Gardner High School, the locker room upgrades at Gardner High School, parcels of those are going to those. The new doors at the middle school and the new roof at the middle school, that’s been assigned to those items that are there. It’s really, you know, helping us get this backlog of projects up to where we need to be. And it’s only been done because we were able to be financially responsible and watchful through just diligent work that needs to be done to keep the new school project as under budget as we could while still maintaining the quality that we wanted to. And it’s been really helpful with us.