BURLINGTON — After a months-long search for a new location, Burlington High School is set to move to the former Macy’s building downtown in early 2021.
At a Burlington School Board meeting Tuesday, board members gave their final approval on a three-and-a-half year lease agreement between the district and the building’s owners, which Superintendent Tom Flanagan will now carry out.
The move is not yet absolutely certain: The lease is contingent on approval from the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation, which will evaluate the property for contaminants in the soil. Officials have worried that hazardous chemicals from a former dry cleaning business may linger on the property.
The Burlington school district has reason to be cautious. The district has been searching for an alternative space since September, when the discovery of elevated levels of polychlorinated biphenyls, carcinogenic chemicals known as PCBs, on the property shuttered the high school indefinitely, and cast uncertainty on the school’s ambitious renovation project.
Since October, students at Burlington Technical Center, which was housed on the same campus as Burlington High, have been learning in-person at various locations in the city. But BHS’s nearly 1,000 students have taken all-online classes since March, which some parents say has taken a toll on their children’s academic performance.
The district had also considered installing trailers on the high school campus, as an in-person alternative to the Macy’s lease. But in the end, said Flanagan, “Macy’s is my clear recommendation.”
“I understand that it is a challenging decision, and I wish we weren’t in this position to be making this decision right now,” he said.
The school board voted 9-0, with two abstentions, to move forward with the lease.
The Macy’s option will likely be significantly cheaper than the trailer alternative. The district estimates the lease and construction costs to convert it to an educational space will total about $10 million, compared with a more uncertain estimate of $13 million for leasing and installing trailers over the same time period.
Even with that lower cost, “we’re going to need help” when it comes to funding, Flanagan said at the meeting. Though there was “a path” to fund the lease as a district, through savings and bond proceeds for the high school’s renovation plans, he is pursuing aid from the state.
The Macy’s plan also has a shorter timeline. Flanagan said he hoped that, if all went smoothly, students would arrive on the premises in late February. The trailers, due to the difficulty of construction in winter conditions, would likely not have been ready until April or May.
The district has been under intense pressure to lay out a plan for a return to in-person learning, with some parents calling for the reopening of most buildings on the original campus, despite the high levels of PCBs, the full extent of which remains unknown.
Still, during the public comment period, several parents spoke in favor of the trailer option over the old Macy’s building. One point of concern was the building’s owners. Developer Don Sinex and his partners in Burlington’s CityPlace development project, which has stalled for years, left a barren piece of land downtown, and mired the city in legal battles.
“Anyone familiar with the history of the pit downtown knows that we should be very concerned about entering into an agreement with the Macy’s owner,” said Adam Bluestein, a parent of two BHS students, calling Sinex a “notorious bad actor.”
The Macy’s building has other downsides, the district says. The space is currently suited for retail, not education. It has no windows, and classroom walls will need to be built. Even when it is outfitted with classrooms, the walls won’t reach the ceiling, which could cause noise concerns.
Though some parents said they are concerned about the prospect of being locked into a years-long lease, officials emphasized that students may still return to the high school’s original campus before the lease expires.
“The school district is looking at this lease for that term for the school district’s purposes,” said school board Chair Clare Wool. “We’re looking at it as a district agreement.”
The property, she explained, might be used as swing space for other district purposes, if the original high school campus is able to open.
It’s unclear when — or if — that will happen. The EPA and the Vermont Department of Health both recommended the school keep the property closed until the district gathers more data on the levels of airborne PCBs, and has a plan for remediation.
In the technical center building, PCB levels reached levels an order of magnitude greater than federal screening levels. In the other five buildings, levels ranged between the Vermont Department of Health’s screening level, 15 nanograms per cubic meter, and that of the EPA’s, 500. Neither of those guidelines are regulatory, and both agencies agreed that the school should close, at least temporarily. Moving forward, however, Vermont’s stricter standards may prove to be an obstacle.
PCB abatement, Flanagan said, would be “a lengthy process.” The district doesn’t expect remediation to start until the spring, at the earliest, he said, meaning that the Macy’s building is a long-term plan.
For now, BHS students are meeting in-person at Edmunds Middle School on Wednesdays, which will begin next week, and will continue after Thanksgiving.
The district had also been in talks with the University of Vermont to use its campus for in-person learning through January, while UVM students were on winter break. On Tuesday, however, UVM announced that it would not allow BHS to come on its campus, a decision that Wool called “frustrating.”
“This has been an extremely difficult decision, especially given the needs of BHS students and the productive conversations we had with school administrators prior to the surge,” UVM Provost Patty Prelock said in a press release.
But, she said, the university decided it had to protect its staff and students who will remain on campus during that time, “many of whom are involved in medical research and healthcare services.”
UVM saw a sharp rise in coronavirus cases this week, along with the rest of the state. Thirty-five cases were reported on campus Monday, the highest yet this fall. Prelock cited the rise as one reason that the talks fell through. “Since our initial conversations, the community context has changed significantly,” she said.
The surge in coronavirus cases has also coincided with BHS’s long-awaited return to school.
The district is still moving forward with those plans. “We’re still doing very well as a district,” Flanagan said.
Burlington schools are among a shrinking number in Vermont that have not seen any coronavirus spread. For now, at least, BHS students can look forward to the first day back in the classroom in more than eight months.
