Renovation Report: Repost of Charlupski Email to Fisher Hill Association

This was sent today (May 12th) to the Fisher Hill Association.

Runkle Update 5/11/2009

The architects (Design Partnership of Cambridge) have been working very hard with both the the faculty and staff in the building and the neighbors to develop a design that will first and foremost work for the schools and have the least impact on the neighbors. For the feasibility stage of the project the Runkle School Building Committee (RSBC ) asked the architects to present 4 options which they did at the April 7th meeting. At that meeting there was a consensus that the “B” option was the preferred option. Since then there were two meetings on April 16th (one with the School community and the other a walk through with the abutters). Both of these meetings were very productive with the architects coming back with a revised B1 and B2 option which both attempted to address concerns brought up to them. The RSBC met on April 30th and further discussed the two options with cost estimates. There was a second meeting with teachers to get their input with regards to B1 and B2. In addition, there was a presentation to the School Committee on April 30. The RSBC will be meeting this Wednesday May 13 at 8:30am to continue to refine the design of the school and to deal with total square footage and budget issues. The School Department has asked the landscape architect to provide a comparison of present square footage of play space versus projected square footage with the new design.There is still a great deal of work that needs to be done in the feasibility stage.

March 7 email sent to Fisher Hill Neighborhood

As many of you know, the Runkle renovation project has been in the Town Capital Improvements Plan (CIP) for at least 10 years. The project is planned in the CIP as a $25 million dollar expense. In January, 2008 we received permission from the School Building Authority(SBA) †to go ahead with the renovation project and for at least 41%reimbursement by the State. The School Building Committee which is required by SBA rules has been meeting since January 2008. The composition of this committee is designated by the SBA to have the following members: Local Chief Executive Officer (Nancy Daly, Chair Board of Selectman), Town Administrator (Rich Kelliher), School Committee (Helen Charlupski & Glenn Cunha), Superintendent of Schools (Bill Lupini), Local official Building Maintenance (Charlie Simmons, Director of Public Buildings) Building Commissioner (Michael Shepard), School Principal (David Summergrad), Deputy Superintendent for Teaching and Learning (Julie Hackett), Local Budget official (Sean Cronin, deputy Town Administrator), Building Commission (Ken Kaplan), and we have added two Runkle parents with construction experience (Scott Newman & Karen Breslawski. (These were the “every Town official was there” alluded to below) Unlike other private projects, there is no Design Advisory Team, but rather the required building committee as noted above.

The Runkle School is one of the first projects to get approval for reimbursement by the new authority. In January 2009, together with the SBA we selected the Design Partnership of Cambridge to be the architects. The contract for architectural fees has been approved by the School Committee and will go to the Selectman and the Building Commission for final approval next week.†

The square footage of the project has not been decided however the we do know that we need to increase the size of the school so that it can accommodate three sections at every grade level and the necessary enlargement of accompanying spaces, ie. Gym, cafeteria, library. This is in order to alleviate over crowding at Runkle and in the district.†

We plan on having three neighborhood meetings through the design process. The first one is to get input from the neighborhood at the beginning of the design process and to share the timeline. The architect will be bringing his traffic consultant to the meeting on the 23rd of March in order to hear the issues for the neighborhood.†

Helen Charlupski