BURLINGTON — The Burlington School Board has signed off on a roughly $181 million design for the city’s proposed new high school — the least expensive option with which it was presented.
In a unanimous vote Wednesday night, board members approved a “conceptual design” that would pair the city’s high school and a regional vocational school, Burlington Technical Center, in one building next to the Institute Road site of its former high school.
The district stopped using most of the New North End campus in 2020, after cancer-causing chemicals were discovered in all six major buildings. For the past two academic years, Burlington students have been attending classes inside a remodeled downtown department store.
The design for the new building, which was endorsed by Superintendent Tom Flanagan, was one of five presented to the board. The options ranged in cost from $181 million to $197 million.
With its conceptual design approved, the new building now enters a phase of “schematic design,” after which officials expect they can better estimate the project’s overall cost. Flanagan said the school district hopes to present residents with a bond proposal by early August, which they would vote on in November’s election.
The district is seeking to open the new school in fall 2025.
In addition to the revenue bond, district officials intend to seek funding through avenues that do not fall squarely on city taxpayers, such as state and local grants. The district also hopes to hire a full-time staff member to raise money for the project through private donations.
The new building’s conceptual design demarcates its general shape and the location of certain components of the school, such as its auditorium, gymnasium and science laboratories. But more specific details about the building will emerge in its schematic design phase, Flanagan said.
“While we have a big decision tonight, there will still be significant room for flexibility as we refine the design,” the superintendent said.
The design option selected by commissioners, dubbed “Option C,” comes with a hitch: all of the campus’s old buildings have to be razed before work can begin on the new one.
That sequencing is problematic because the district still uses one facility on the campus. “Building A,” which had the least amount of detectable toxins, still hosts athletic events and performances, and meals from its kitchen serve multiple schools in the district.
District officials did not detail how they would maintain the operations currently housed in Building A upon its demolition.
“We do not yet know if we will rent gym space (and kitchen space), or what it will cost, but we believe that there are solutions available (including using other BSD gyms, and gyms in the greater Burlington area),” the project’s development team wrote in a memo.
The board could have picked another option that would have largely replicated the chosen design but allowed Building A to remain standing until most of the new high school was finished. That would have meant delaying the construction of the Burlington Technical Center by at least a year, however, which did not sit well with commissioners.
The layout of the technical center remains a contested matter. A handful of speakers criticized the board during the meeting’s public forum period Wednesday night, saying they were not properly considering the input of surrounding towns, which — as part of a regional district — send students to the center.
“If you want to optimize the building for your own vision, that’s OK. You should build it on your own and be on your own,” said Chuck Lacy, a Jericho school board member and former president of Ben and Jerry’s. “That direction, in our view, breaks up the (technical center) district.”
But Burlington officials pushed back against that sentiment.
Jason Gingold, the technical center’s executive director, said Burlington officials would solicit more detailed input about the center’s design in future meetings. Flanagan, meanwhile, said that a broader rethinking of the technical center’s governance would take years — too long to consider as part of the new school’s construction.
“As one of the most racially, culturally and economically diverse districts in our state, we need to act now to prioritize deeper learning that is connected to high-skill, high-wage, high-demand jobs in our city and state,” Flanagan said.
School district officials expect to present the project’s schematic design to the board in late June or early July.
