WESTFIELD – At a special meeting of the Westfield School Committee last night, a special ad-hoc committee was created to vet the options for finding a site for the students of Juniper Park Elementary School when the city vacates the property in 2015.
The committee will be chaired by Ray Diaz and will also include School Committee Vice Chair Cindy Sullivan and Finance Chair Kevin Sullivan. They will meet next Monday at City Hall at 6:45 p.m.
“We hope to roll out the options and begin exploring them as a committee,” said Westfield Superintendent Dr. Suzanne Scallion, who added that there were several parents in attendance last night. “Obviously everyone wants to know the plan and I think we all need an endpoint and a timeline.”
Scallion stated the biggest issue facing this committee is obviously the opening of a new school.
“We have to guage cost over time and we don’t know what the length of time will be in establishing an alternative site for up to 300 kids,” she said. “We hope to vet our options next Monday and take a good month to explore the pros and cons of each and do a cost-analysis of each.”
Scallion stressed that she expects the process to be open and transparent and wants families to weigh in on the process.
“Our job is to make a recommendation to the full school committee on where we’re going to place the students and what the plan is when Juniper closes,” said Diaz. “I’ve been told there are five options. I haven’t been told what they are yet, but everything is going to come out in open session.”
Diaz said that the committee is already planning on holding another meeting on Thursday of next week.
“I don’t know if we’ll get through all of the options and the pros and cons of each,” he said.
“The architect has finished his assessments for three of the sites and we expect to have five in place for folks next week,” she said. “Let’s roll out all five out on the table at the same time.”
