Design details for potential Minot Forest School replacement take shape

Aug 24, 2018

Plans for a proposed $90 million school, which would replace Minot Forest Elementary, are coming together as the committee working on the project are getting into the “nitty gritty.”

On Wednesday, the Wareham School Committee heard an update on the project from Minot Forest Elementary School Principal Joan Seamans. She is a member of the School Committee-appointed School Building Committee, which is tasked with overseeing the design of the new school.

“We’ve been meeting all summer…looking at the exterior and interior design of the building,” said Seamans. “We’ve gotten down to the nitty gritty as fas as the location of doors, breakout spaces and where bathrooms will be located. We haven’t made any final decisions yet.”

Draft plans call for constructing a 159,100 square foot building for students in pre-kindergarten through fourth grade to replace Minot Forest and Decas Elementary Schools. The building would be located where Minot Forest is located now. The new school is needed to replace Minot, which is beset with structural problems and requires significant upgrades for security, electrical wiring and fire safety.

Currently, the school building project is in the “schematic design phase.” In this stage, the Massachusetts School Building Authority and Wareham Public Schools officials are working to draft detailed designs for the potential project.

Plans call for completing a design in time for voters to consider approving a debt exclusion at the October 2018 Town Meeting. If approved, Wareham voters would have to OK funding the school during the state's Nov. 6 election as a ballot question. The debt exclusion would raise taxes on residents to pay for the project for the life of the debt.

At April Town Meeting in 2017, voters approved the borrowing of $1 million to fund a feasibility study. The feasibility study explored different options for revamping the school and is a requirement of the Massachusetts School Building Authority, which will reimburse the town approximately $56 million for the project’s construction cost. The town will have to pay approximately $39 million.