WESTFIELD – Among the potential plans presented Thursday evening at a meeting of the Westfield School Committee’s ad hoc subcommittee, a group evaluating potential sites for the relocation of Juniper Park Elementary students after the school is taken by Westfield State University in 2015, one option was the moving of students to an elementary school in the neighboring hillltown of Russell.
No formal decision was made by the ad-hoc committee Thursday evening and another meeting is scheduled for October 15.
“I think it’s a good idea. I’d heard about it from a constituent, so I went up to look at it,” said at-Large City Councilor David Flaherty, a proponent of the Russell option. “I met with them very quickly. I didn’t have time to go through the school board. I didn’t want to wait a month.”
After meeting with Russell’s Board of Selectmen, Flaherty found that the idea sounded even better.
“It seems like a winner all around. They need to rent it out. They’re still paying on it,” he said. “It’s less than a 10-minute drive from Juniper. It’s a beautiful little school.”
As far as the concerns raised by the dozen or so parents in attendance at the ad-hoc meeting about emergency medical services and snow days, Flaherty believes them to be minor issues in the grand scheme of things.
“Route 20 is a state road and has a highway crew that maintains it. It’s not a city crew, so that road is very well taken care of in the winter,” he said. “The state police barracks is two blocks from there, so that road is in very good shape.”
“I know from my stuff with the Boy Scouts that Camp Moses is in Russell and that, if you dial 911, you’ll get the Hilltown Ambulance Service,” he said. “All of our leaders (in Boy Scouts) have been trained to call Westfield Police and Fire, because they have EMT’s and other certified people that deal with a lot more volume.”
“I’d imagine the same could be done with the schools. There is no reason you can’t send for a Westfield Ambulance. It might take a couple of minutes longer, but you’re going to get a better skilled person,” he said. “I’d imagine any critical emergency could be taken care of fairly quickly and you’ll have a school nurse there, too.”
Flaherty doesn’t foresee Boston having any issues with the proposed arrangement.
“They have regional school districts all over the state,” he said. “If anything, I’d think the MSBA would be excited about it because it would give Russell a stream of income to pay back the debt on the building.”
“It’s a winner for us because it’d cost as much as Juniper Park and there won’t be much upfront cost,” Flaherty added. “It has a nice field, a playground, plenty of parking and the building is in decent shape. It really looks pretty nice.”
While he believes the idea of placing the students in the Greater Westfield Boys and Girls Club is an “interesting idea”, Flaherty doesn’t think it’s the district’s best option.
“I don’t think we need to spend that kind of money,” he said, citing the estimated $1.6 million in startup funding the district said would be required for the project, with an annual cost of $222,500 for rent and modular units.
The estimated annual costs for the Russell proposal over three, five and ten year periods are roughly $260,000 per year before factoring in the consumer-price index.
The district estimates that the Russell proposal would cost $780,000 over three years, $1.3 million over five and $2.6 million over a decade, while the Boys & Girls Club is ballparked at $2.267 million over three years, $2.71 million over five and $3.82 million over a decade.
The average annual spending for the district would decrease in the Boys & Girls Club option, with the project costing $755,000 per year over three years, $542,000 per year over five years and $382,000 over a decade.
It was the introduction of long-term plans that surprised Flaherty the most Thursday night.
“Originally people were thinking this might be three years until the new school gets built, but that school isn’t getting built in three years,” he said. “I think looking a little longer term makes sense, but I don’t know if putting a school at the Boys & Girls Club for five years makes any sense. It would take over their whole business.
