After graduating its 66th class of seniors last weekend, Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School is reaching the threshold of a long-sought building project to expand the 165,000-square-foot school and update it to 21st-century standards.
The school building committee last week picked a conceptual design for a new school with a two-story classroom wing and a complete renovation of the original 1959 building and its 1980s addition, both of which are riddled with outdated air-handling and utility systems, leaking roofs and cramped learning spaces that no longer meet building and educational codes.
As currently designed, the renovation and addition together would increase the school’s size from 165,000 square feet to 211,000 square feet, although the building committee and school officials have vowed to find space-saving ways to trim that total.
The building project is estimated to be finished by the end of 2030, after about two and a half years of construction.
The combination of renovation and addition was one of three main options to update the school, and officials said the decision would allow classes and activities to continue in the old facility while the new wing is built, saving tens of millions on modular classrooms. Students would then move to the addition during the original school’s renovation.
“That was huge to all of us who work in the school — minimizing the use of trailers for instruction,” high school coordinator Sam Hart said during an informal public gathering at the high school on June 4.
For the new school to be built, however, the project’s design — and its cost, now estimated at between $220 million and $270 million with state reimbursements — must win approval from both the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) this year and Island voters next spring.
After turning down six previous applications from the regional high school beginning in 2016, the state building authority two years ago accepted MVRHS into its selective reimbursement program, which would repay an estimated one-fifth or more of the total costs as long as other conditions are met.
Those conditions include the state authority’s approval for every aspect of the project, as well as voter approval in all six towns to pay their shares.
To reach this point, in 2022 an all-Island committee of town officials had to hammer out a cost-sharing agreement for the building project and revise the much-amended 1954 agreement on operating costs, both of which were required by the state building authority in order for the school to be eligible for reimbursements.
Voters took their first step at the 2023 town meetings, approving $2 million for a feasibility study and clearing the way for acceptance into the MSBA program.
For more than a year and a half, a 25-member school building committee of town officials and other Islanders has been working with Tappé Architects and project manager CHA to develop a winning project.
Navigating between the MSBA’s space requirements — for classrooms, laboratories and workshops for career and technical education programs — and townspeople’s concerns, chiefly over adding debt that will raise property taxes, has been a tricky task.
After initial estimates soared above $400 million for an expanded, 260,000-square-foot school project, the building committee and professional team pared the size down to 211,00 square feet and vowed to continue looking for ways to reduce it further.
“We’re going to work hard to get those numbers down,” Mr. Hart said, noting that the cost per square foot for school construction on Martha’s Vineyard is sharply higher than elsewhere in Massachusetts.
“On the Island here, it’s about $1,200 a square foot,” he said, comparing it to about $800 per square foot for recent work at Millis High School in Norfolk County.
After looking at close to a dozen design concepts from Tappé architect Chris Sharkey, the committee last week chose the renovation project with the two-story addition as its recommendation to the state building authority, which will meet on the project next month.
“[The committee] felt that the best option, the one that has the most viability and supports our educational programming, is an addition-renovation,” Mr. Hart said.
Other conceptual designs included a simple code renovation of the existing facility. This would have been the least costly option, but also risked rejection from the state building program for failing to meet the objectives stated in the school’s original statement of interest to the MSBA.
These included increasing the workshop space for career and technical education classes to meet standards set by the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, which oversees public instruction.
At the other end of the design spectrum, an all-new school was deemed prohibitively expensive, making renovation-addition the most achievable choice. The state offers some higher reimbursement rates for renovations of existing facilities, Mr. Hart said.
The slimmed-down design saves tens of millions by leaving out all of the campus east of Sanderson Road, including the athletic fields, but includes the running track on the west side, which has long needed renovations.
The design also leaves untouched the performing arts center, the gymnasium and much of the construction from the school’s 1994 addition, Mr. Hart said.
In accordance with enrollment projections, the future school is intended for 803 students; enrollment for the 2024-2025 school was 735, principal Sara Dingledy said, down from 803 in the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We bubbled when everyone sort of bubbled,” Ms. Dingledy said.
The 2022 agreement on building costs, a formula that takes into account both student populations and equalized property values in each town, has Edgartown paying 30.1 per cent of the cost for the MSBA/MVRHS project; Tisbury, 22.9 per cent; Oak Bluffs, 22.8 per cent; West Tisbury, 13.4 per cent; Chilmark, 8.2 per cent and Aquinnah, 2.4 per cent.
Some Tisbury officials now are questioning their town’s share, saying it places an undue burden on the Island’s lowest-income town.
But Kathryn Shertzer, who represents Oak Bluffs on the high school committee, said this is no time to try and revise the formula.
“The Island [had] to come together and create a new funding formula for this very specific capital project that everybody could agree to and move forward with. And truly, if we could not have come up with this, we would not be this far in the MSBA project,” Ms. Shertzer said at last week’s community gathering.
“If we had to reimagine this funding formula, it may jeopardize where we are in the project,” she said.
The pushback also has been frustrating for Tisbury school committee chair Amy Houghton. Cost qualms in Tisbury were what led to the loss of MSBA status for the town elementary school, which wound up costing taxpayers about $40 million more than if it had been built with state reimbursements, Ms. Houghton told the Gazette.
The school also had to pay tens of millions for modular classroom rentals, which are not reimbursable.
In order for the high school to proceed in the MSBA program, the project must gain approval at all six town meetings and their subsequent town elections next spring, Mr. Hart said.
“There are 12 votes that need to happen for this school to pass,” he said.
Ms. Shertzer expressed optimism about the outcome.
“I’m confident as an Island that we can support this project, because it really isn’t just a school,” she said. “I look at our high school as a community center that is used from 7 [a.m.] to 2:30 [p.m.] for our students and from 3 to 9 o’clock at night for the rest of our community.”
To win over voters across the Vineyard, high school building committee members are continuing their series of public forums, with the next scheduled for June 26 on Zoom.
The committee also maintains a project website at mvrhsbuildingproject.info.
Editor's note: a previous version of this article included the wrong percentage that Oak Bluffs would pay for a new school building project. It has been corrected.
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