All right.

I'm on the people.

I'm going to call the meeting, special meeting of the Board of Alderman to order on Thursday, June 4th, 2026 at 7 p.m.

in the Aldermanic Chamber, which has been duly noticed in two places, including the city's website in accordance with the requirements of RSA 91A.

The prayer will be offered by Alderman Tebow.

And the pledge to the flag will be led by Alderman Senate.

Almighty God, we have the high honor and the serious duty to manage the affairs of our beloved city.

Fill us, O God, with a spirit of unity and understanding, which enables us to face our multiple problems with a serene mind with justice and charity for all, so that any and all decisions made by us will always be for the betterment and greater happiness of all of our fellow citizens, so help us God.

Amen.

I pledge the United States of America.

And to the Republic for which it stands.

One nation under the Underground Individual Liberty and justice for all the questions.

I want to thank Alderman Tebow for offering to clerk this evening.

Would the clerk please call the roll?

Alderman Clemens.

Unable to join us this evening.

Haldeman Clee.

Up at the planning board.

Alderman Ravan.

Here.

Alderwoman Smith.

Alderman Tebow is here.

Alderman O'Brien.

President.

Alderman Greg.

She had a conflict, won't be here this evening.

Haldeman Dowd.

President.

Haldeman Sullivan.

Here.

Alderman Senate.

Here.

Alderman Johnson.

Present.

Alderwoman Kelly.

I am here.

I am attending remotely due to child care commitments.

I am in this room alone and I can hear everyone.

Alderman Morgan.

Here.

Alderman Lopez.

Here.

And Alderman Wilshire.

Here.

We have 11 people.

We have quorum.

Thank you.

Also joining us this evening is Mayor Jim Donchis and Corporation Council Steve Bolton.

Tonight we have a discussion.

Um a presentation.

The Harriman Facility Study presentation.

I'm going to recognize Superintendent of Schools.

Mario Andrade.

Alderman Sullivan.

Madam President, I'd like uh I was looking at the agenda and I noticed that there was no public comment, and there were some people from the public that had attended tonight.

I'm wondering if we could uh I'd like to make a motion to allow a period of public comment wherever you deem necessary uh at the meeting tonight.

Okay, I I would suggest at the end of the meeting because anything we haven't we haven't been presented anything to discuss.

Right, I understand.

So if you want to make that motion with the clerk call the roll.

Oh.

Oh, Alderman Teb.

Yes.

Okay, yeah, I'd like to discuss it.

Um so this is a presentation on something that we're not even gonna be voting for.

It's gonna come through the Board of Education.

They're gonna make a big decision before we even get the money for it.

So I don't know why we would have public comment here on a presentation that's really the Board of Ed's responsibility.

The public comment should be with them because they're the ones making the decision.

They can come up here and say you should do this and you should do that, or I think this and I think that.

But we're not making that decision.

So it this is more of a presentation than it is that kind of thing.

So I'm not sure why we would push public comment for this kind of meeting.

Um it's not that kind of meeting.

It's not one of the ones where we really should have public comment.

Um I also want to recognize uh Alderwoman Smith is is here as well.

Thank you.

Alderman Sullivan.

Thank you, if I may.

I think it is it's a public meeting, and I think the public is here, thus we should let them speak.

Regardless of what happens tonight, even if we don't take a vote at some point, uh there may come there may be some uh comments about this study that I think that we're gonna keep coming back to, and I think it's important that uh some of the people that are here tonight are probably sat through some of the public um uh forums that have been held, and I'd like to hear what they have to say.

And I have no problem with it.

Alderman Tebow.

Thank you.

Um then if we have it at the end, it should be about everything, not just about the the Harriman study.

I think everybody that's here can speak about whatever they want, and I advise everybody to come up, board of ed, speak on whatever you want in the city because that's the open public comment.

That's what Alderman Sullivan wants.

That's what we should get.

Alderman Senate.

Thank you, Madam President.

Um I'm in favor of a period of public comment uh following the study presentation, and I I do believe that we can in doing so um ask that it be directed towards the material that we're hearing tonight.

I've been party to many meetings throughout the city where it wasn't on the agenda.

I've been party to many meetings throughout the city where it wasn't on the agenda, a motion was made to allow it, and it was asked at that time that the topic of public comment be the topic being discussed or presented that night.

Thank you.

Alderman Johnson, thank you.

I think it should be open to the public for comment.

I want to hear what the public has to say.

This this way it keeps it transparent so we all know about it.

If they'd like to speak on something else, that's fine.

But I would really prefer if we could keep the comment to what the discussion is tonight, only because this way the school board and the administration can hear what the public is talking about this because they might not have another chance, but where it's where it's not at the beginning of the meeting as far as another chance for us to be together at this point in time.

But if they would like to speak on another topic, I don't have a problem with this.

Thank you.

Alderman Morgan.

Um, I do think that the public should be able to speak.

Um thank you for coming out.

You may not be have something in mind right now, but after the presentation, you may.

Um, and I agree that if there's something this triggers something else that you may have um want to advocate on behalf of, please do so.

Um, should that be the motion?

Alderman Lopez.

Um I also wanted to support the concept of public comment, um, not just because I feel like I need to convince the public that I want to listen to them because they can make public comment at the majority of our meetings.

Um, but I also appreciate the observation that was made by one of my colleagues identifying the roles because I think it's pretty easy for the public to uh sort of blend different roles, point fingers when it's philically convenient.

So while I will support public comment, I also appreciate the fact that anybody was willing to speak up and remind people that this is the Board of Education's decision.

Alderman Tebow.

Thank you, Madam President.

Um I would just ask the rest of the board if they had a shot to ask their constituents to come tonight and hope to speak.

I mean, I saw Alderman Sullivan pushing it on uh his Facebook page that he would push for this tonight and that he he told Ward 9 residents to come out.

So did we all do that as well, or are we just getting people that are here for Alderman Sullivan?

So I would have liked to.

If I knew because I looked at the the meeting, there was no public comment on the meeting, so I didn't tell my constituents to come and speak.

So and I assume not nobody else did it as well, other than one.

So I mean I think that's probably unfair.

Uh we should have everybody come and speak if they want to, not just people that are um are or friends with with Alderman Sullivan.

So um I will support it, but I'll only support it if they can speak about anything because that's the way the end of our meetings are.

If they're gonna speak in front, they can only speak about what we're talking about.

If they speak at the end, they can speak on anything they want for three minutes, anything.

I think that's what we should do.

Would the clerk please call the roll?

Yeah, uh, let's see.

Alderman Ravan.

Yes.

Alderman Smith.

No.

Alderman Timbow votes no.

Alderman O'Brien.

No.

Alderman Dowd.

No.

Alderman Sullivan.

Yes.

Alderman Senate.

Yes.

Alderman Johnson?

Yes.

Alderman Kelly.

No.

Alderman Morgan?

Yes.

Alderman Lopez, Chair.

Alderman will share.

Yes.

Did he vote?

We have seven yeses and four no's.

So that's a good question.

So yes, is get it.

You get public comment.

Oh, congratulations.

I'm sorry, Dr.

Andre, you have the floor.

So uh good evening, um uh Dr.

Mario Andre, superintendent schools, and I want to thank uh the Board of Alderman for holding this special uh meeting this evening.

I think it's really important almost to uh Miss Johnson's point of around transparency.

I want to take us back 18 months when there was legislation to fund the facility study, and what was the why at that time?

And so we've been having conversations years over years of what's the future of our schools look like?

What's the configurations of our buildings?

But more importantly, what's the status of our buildings?

Um I have the utmost respect for Director Sean Smith, uh director of Plant Ops.

And every year he comes in front of the CIP with a list of projects.

And everyone's like, where did those projects come from?

Who analyzed them?

How do we know they're the top priorities?

What's the true cost of them?

I really commend the Board of Alderman for last year for taking an important step to say, let's do a comprehensive study.

And so what we're hearing tonight is uh some of the recommendations coming out of a year's worth of work.

And it is really not just a board of Alderman or Board of Education discussion, but it's it's a city of Nashworth discussion.

So I don't think it's just one meeting.

We've had three uh community forums to date.

But this is going to be ongoing meetings, and really tonight it is about transparency.

What is the status of our buildings?

And what's our future projects coming up over not just one year, but for the next 40 years.

No matter what the configuration is going to be, we also need to have a great conversation.

And you know, the the mayor's put out uh what is the the city of uh Nashua's vision in 2040.

Do the schools match that vision.

There should be one conversation between the Board of Alderman and the Board of Education in the city taxpayers on what do our schools look like in 2050?

And more importantly, how do we fund it?

So what the schools look like now in 2026, what do the schools look like in 2035, what do they look like in 2045?

And that's a generational investment.

And I think those are the conversations that we need to look like over time because this you, as the Board of Alderman doing a great plan on enticing people to the city, and part of enticing people to either come to the city or stay in the city is great public schools, and that's a community investment, and that's part of the study tonight is what do our schools look like and really come into a shared vision on the quality of education with not only the brick and mortar, but what's also happening in the teaching and learning within those schools, and it's really a community investment.

So this is a series of conversations.

I don't think we're gonna have one decision tonight, or there's no vote tonight or the Board of Education coming forward, but we need community input.

Uh we need the Board of Alderman to be aware of what's going on.

We don't want something that happened a year ago of why didn't we know about Stellos Field?

Why didn't we know about this project or the status of that building?

So we'll start coming into more and more data so that we can plan for the future moving forward in one vision, one vision of Nashua.

So it's not just the Board of Ed, it's not just the Board of Alderman, but it's really a city vision moving forward.

So there'll be a lot of conversations going back and forth on what does it mean to my neighborhood school?

But I think we need to look forward over time of what does high quality public education look like in totality.

We've been having conversations about we have a declining enrollment.

Do we need all the schools?

And if we do, that's fine, but there's a cost to it.

If we can say we're gonna keep all the schools open, let's keep all the schools open.

But we'll see a facility study saying, what's the cost of repairs?

Are we willing to make that investment?

And that's a collective discussion.

So again, these are gonna be powerful conversations, as we say in our strategic plan, courageous conversations, they're bold conversations, they're not easy.

Um, they will impact either a financial decision or families and decisions.

So I think again, the more conversations that we can have around the data in support of our community, we're better as a one Nashua.

So I'm really happy to um welcome Lisa and Jamie to the podium tonight to go over where they are in the study, present some of the data, and engage in a conversation with you on what is our conditions, how do they come up with those numbers, and then start making recommendations as we start moving forward.

Again, there's no decisions being made tonight, but this isn't really about transparency.

This is the status of our schools, and really what we need to get into is what's our long-term planning.

What do we want our schools to look like in five years, ten years, 50 years from now, and then how do we start investing in them?

So I thank you for um again having us tonight, and I'm gonna invite Lisa and Jamie from Harriman to uh go over the PowerPoint.

Thank you, Dr.

Andre.

Well, good evening.

Um, my name is Lisa, and this is Jamie Willet.

We're both from Harriman.

We're here to give you an update on where we're at in the facility master plan.

Um, I believe you have our presentation.

And if not, I have it on a thumb drive if necessary.

We might need a thumb drive.

Yeah, I mean, I don't see that.

I don't know if she put it on here or not.

Thanks.

All right, while we're waiting for that, I'll set the table a little bit.

Um, we're gonna talk about the intent of the master plan, but I think um Mario did a fantastic job of kind of setting the table for why this was initially started.

We're gonna go over the data that has been collected to date, and then we're gonna talk about long-term options for consideration.

And I say for consideration, we have looked at a wide spectrum of options and identify those for consideration.

So this is really where the conversations that Mari was talking about will come into play as to what might be the best solution, or maybe there are some hybrid of those options to move forward with.

So if we can advance the next slide.

All right, so we're gonna talk about the why, how, and what.

So the project intent, our approach to the master plan, uh data collection to inform the long-term options.

We'll talk about what goes into the forming those options, the review of the options, um, what is it approximately going to cost, different considerations for cost savings, next steps in the process, and then there is a ton of data behind all of this.

Some of it is included in the appendix tonight.

Um you can see some of the decision-making matrices as to weighting some of these options is included in the matrix in the appendix.

But there is also in draft form right now, I think it's over a thousand pages.

A couple of couple thousand pages of data that goes into the facilities assessment because we we studied all of the schools in the district.

But that will go to the next slide.

And you can advance from there.

All right, the why.

So, as mentioned before, you have decreasing enrollment.

We're gonna highlight what the study shows for the enrollment.

Your facilities are increasing in age as well, and not all the infrastructure supports the students' basic educational needs for future-ready teaching and learning.

So, what is needed?

A proactive, sustainable, and cost-effective solution that creates warm, safe, and welcoming buildings to support our current and future population.

And when we talk about proactive, it's you know not just saying, oh, the boiler has failed, we need to come up with money to replace it.

This study looks at here are all the things that we're seeing in the next several years that could come up.

So this puts together a plan as how to approach those, how to set money aside to approach those in the short term, the near term, and the long term.

All right, uh, we established uh goals at the beginning of the project.

So these are the project goals for the overall facility study.

Um it's to address the building needs, address items beyond the critical needs of the CIP, which we just talked about for funding and planning.

Include how the school's investments impact student educational needs.

So we'll talk about some of the programmatic elements.

Um always considering state um aid as an option, addressing safety and security needs, um, addressing parking and traffic issues, and intertwining with the five-year strategic plan that is happening simultaneously to this.

So our approach, um we have done communication and community engagement throughout this process.

There's been several community forums where we've solicited community feedback.

But where we started was the kickoff meeting to establish those goals and expectations.

Then our team of architects and engineers, if you're not familiar with Harriman, we have architects and engineers in-house.

Um, our whole team went to each of the sites.

Um we uh toured the physical site itself as well as the building exterior and interior and identified uh key building systems and um what repairs were recommended for them and or what was the expected um life remaining life cycle.

So to put it in context of your home, your roof only has so many years until you have to replace it.

So, same thing.

A boiler in a school only has so many years before it has to be replaced.

So we identified if it's beyond its life cycle or if it's coming up in a certain number of years for that.

Uh we also looked at capacity and utilization.

So capacity is looking at the classrooms within the building and how many students based on the size and the loading of either the DOE or the district can be educated within that space to meet the within the program that they're providing.

And then the utilization looks at how many students are being educated in that building so we can see what the utilization is.

Enrollment projections.

Uh we had a third party do the ruler enrollment projections, NESDEC.

Um, they do a lot of projections throughout New England.

They are looking at live births, they're looking at historic enrollment, they are also talking to the town about any potential housing development and the number of bedrooms that may have in those different units and the um they have a certain ratio of kids that usually equates to that will be in the schools.

And so you'll see the data on that.

And then we take that data and we start defining options, and we'll talk a little bit about our approach to defining a wide spectrum of options for everybody to consider.

The next steps will be arriving at a long-term option, and then we put together the master plans.

Once we know what that long-term option is, then we can start the plan of the near-term, midterm, and overall.

And that equates to the capital capital projects plans as well.

So next slide.

So what informs the options?

So looking at everything that went into some options you're going to see later on the slide deck.

Everything from location within the district.

So we look at geographic location, maybe it's proximity to other schools as well.

Original and average age of the facility, the condition assessment, the repair cost based on that condition assessment, the capacity of the school, the overall enrollment projections, a program and educational visioning, and program cost.

Those are all factors that go into the creating of the options.

We'll go to the next slide.

And so what goes into making a recommendation?

So we we aren't making the recommendation, we're giving options for the district to make a recommendation to the school board, and the school board will then make a decision as to whether that is an accepted recommendation.

But these are all the things that go into making a recommendation.

It's not just one thing.

So there's what's called a matrices.

So we we created a matrices based on all the different criteria we heard throughout this process and ran each of the options through that matrices, and that's what a lot of the appendix is made up of, cost, uh, community input, student impact and educational impact, and operational efficiency.

So that's everything that will go into an ultimate recommendation recommended option.

Next slide.

Alright, so this is all the data that we collected, age of facilities and renovation or addition, assessment and conditions, energy usage, demographic enrollment, capacity study, programming, and community input.

We'll go to the next slide.

So this is a chart we put together, and what this illustrates is the age of the original building is in that green box.

Um then each dot represents some when it had a major renovation andor addition.

And what this does is it just illustrates maybe when the last time that school had a major renovation addition, or how many times it's been repaired or renovated and/or expanded, and there's the original building, that infrastructure is still that original age, but parts of it have been replaced over time.

So we'll take Amherst is at the top here.

The original building is over 130 years old.

However, it has had some major renovations or renovations and/or additions that have occurred, and one of those is 60 years old, one of them is 45 years old, and one is 25 years old.

And so that's ultimately what this is just trying to show in comparison.

And in the yellow box, and it's kind of hard to read, but the US Department of Education, National National Center for Education Statistics, had a report and they referred to Ornstein who did a study in 94, and this data has been applicable since then, but it's a national average, 20 to 30 years old, frequent replacement of equipment is needed in schools.

Same thing that we would see in our house.

Between 20 and 40 years old, the original equipment should have been replaced, including the roof and the electrical equipment.

And then after 40 years, a school building become begins rapid deterioration.

This is when you start to see some of those major renovations happening in schools.

Now, this next one, it it's not, it's it is the national average, but we know it's not an end-all be-all.

But what it says is after 60 years, most schools are abandoned, but we know that many schools are renovated and added on to and have uh lasted beyond that, and many of your schools are an example of that.

Um, so just a good data point on the age of the facilities and components in the facilities.

Next.

Alright, so what this looks at is the square footage of all of the facilities, the number of students, and so it's just trying to compare and contrast the if we divide the square footage by the number of students, what is the square foot per student?

And the reason that we illustrate this is if we were to, as a benchmark, design a new school.

An elementary school would typically be designed for 140 to 160 square feet per elementary student.

A middle school would be designed between 160 and 180 square feet per student, and a high school depending on if it has CTE or not, 180 to 240.

And so we bolded the ones that are above, significantly above that square footage.

But I will I will put a caveat on this that some of these schools have more special education programs than others.

So we can't just take this as black and white, it's just another data point that we have to look at as we start to consider these options.

We'll go to the next slide.

Alright, facilities condition.

So this is the heat map that we created for the facilities condition assessment.

They're a report and a recommendation line by line for all of the different things we see in the building.

But what this does is generally look at the condition of different systems in each building.

And we'll just pause here for a minute to look at the key, and then the next slide's gonna blow this up so it's more legible.

But excellent means it's new or in like new condition.

Um good condition, um continue to maintain.

The yellow is fair, so average for the building age continue to maintain, poor, um worn for use, end of um, I think it says uh expected life expectancy or um or life expectancy met, and then critical is extremely worn or damaged and needs to be replaced.

Um go to the next slide, and this is where it's a little easier to read.

On the left hand side is each of the categories that were assessed.

So everything from site civil, ADA compliance, envelope, um, and so on and so forth across the top is every building.

And so we had each of our engineers and architects look at all of the repairs that were recommended and say, okay, if you were to give it a general rating overall, what color would it be?

Now remember there's detail behind each one of these, so there may be some things that are in new condition and others that are in critical, um, but maybe overall that we got an average score of poor.

So this allows us to quickly see, okay, where are those schools maybe that are in more of the reds, the oranges, and the yellows, the ones that need more work.

And so it quickly a couple of them came uh forward as having more of that.

The two that that kind of uh jumped out the most were Amherst and Mount Pleasant.

Those are the ones that are in the red box.

The others in the orange box, bicentennial, Charlotte, Fairgrounds Elementary School, Ledge Street, and New Cerals.

So those are the ones that jumped out color wise.

And we'll go to the next slide.

So this is the cost for each of those repair items.

So again, we have a very detailed spreadsheet that goes line by line for all these costs.

What the graph shows is those immediate repairs, those critical repair costs in the first graph, and then the near term, so um beyond critical, and then what's jumping out here is a couple of the schools.

So Mount Pleasant has some of the more critical repairs, and then in yellow and blue, um trying to find the key here.

Um help me out, Jamie.

Which ones are those?

Which are we look at the over the right?

Over to the right.

Looks like it's probably national south and national north with the 22 million, so that's probably related to the roof.

Yeah.

So if we go to the next slide, we'll see them combined.

It'll be easier.

There we go.

You're you're spot on.

Um, so those are your high schools.

Not surprising, they're over 25 years old now.

Um, or at the 25-year mark, that's when you start to see a lot of these things aging out.

Um the other schools, so not we're not seeing as much at the middle schools.

There was a lot of work just done on the middle schools.

The others are the elementary schools, so we're looking at um Mount Pleasant, probably has the highest, or does have the highest combined total.

Um, and then um uh Amherst, New Sarrills and which one?

Fledge.

Ledge.

What's the one next to Mount Pleasant?

Bicentennial.

Oh, next to which one?

Mount Pleasant?

New Sereals.

New serials.

Yeah.

Okay.

So we go to the next slide.

This is a little easier.

Um, so this is where we put the critical, so the schools are down the left, and we have critical, which is zero to two, three to ten year repairs, and then the total for those.

And so we started to identify those that have the largest dollar amount of repairs.

And Amherst and Mount Pleasant were the two that jumped out to have the highest totals.

Um, and then we also look at cost per square foot because to think about it, we have to think that these schools are different sizes, so that cost per square foot helps to kind of compare and contrast them against each other.

So that cost per square foot helps to kind of compare and contrast them against each other.

Then we look at the ones that are in the orange, and you have bicentennial Charlotte Fairgrounds, Ledge Street, and New Cereals that have higher dollar value than some of the others, as well as a higher cost per square foot.

So if we go to the next slide.

Um capital improvement plan.

We started with a 10 to 12 year, and we started to say, okay, what are the different priorities?

There was a pretty long list of priorities, but the top ones were life safety, safety and security, HBAC and plumbing and ADA.

That's as far as we were able to get in the priority list for the 10 to 12 years.

We assigned $2 million in repairs per year in this 10 to 12 years.

It equates to about 20.1 million dollars in 10 to 12 years.

The total repair value of all of these schools is 144 million dollars.

So you can see that taking this approach takes a very small bite out of the overall need.

Um, and so that's why we start to look at are there other big picture options that we can potentially do to address the needs overall.

So I just want to note that that 20.1 million is again in today's dollar.

So we in our CIP plan, we have planned out with the escalation of three to four percent each year to fit that two million dollar.

But yeah, so the two the 20 million is is in today's dollars as well as the the overall 144 million, and then depending on how we do the plan, we'll escalate accordingly.

Yeah, next slide.

All right, we also look at energy usage.

Uh, one of the things we look at is EUI, that's energy use intensity.

To put that in terms, everyone understands.

You think about miles per gallon for your car, it's the same idea for a EUI is the same thing for a building.

Here, though, the lower the number, the better.

Um, and so we are looking, we gave a benchmark at the bottom when we design, we picked an elementary school for reference.

When we design a new elementary school, we are targeting an EUI of 25 to 30, just so you can see in comparison.

And lots, I think almost all are above that, and some are significantly above that.

Um, Charlotte, New Cereals, and the administration building have the highest EUI.

We also look at total energy cost per square foot.

Again, that allows us to compare and contrast based on the size of the building.

And you start to see some of those values uh climbing up there.

Um what we're doing right now is digging into some of these numbers to see are there any anomalies that might be causing that?

Is there something to do with you know the HVAC system or things like that?

Something to keep in mind, because some of these might you may be surprised they might be lower than one might think.

Um older buildings that maybe haven't had renovations to mechanical systems, just for example.

The the code has changed to where we need to meet certain ventilation rates, which causes more draw on power, and so if it's an older building, it may not have that draw on the power, which may mean that it's a lower cost per square foot.

And you may have said this is but the higher the UI, the less efficient the building is.

Alright, next slide.

All right, we're gonna get into demographics and enrollment data real quick.

Um the the trends in the demographic trends, um, population 2013 to 2033 or 2023.

Um, there's 5.3 increase.

Um, however, the median age has increased as well.

So in 2000 it was 35.8.

Now in 2023 it was 39.7.

Um percent of population zero to 18-year-olds has decreased by 3.5%, as well as the birth rate has decreased 14.59%.

Um for enrollment data.

Um, again, we started this uh study uh several months back, so you can see we'll give the years to when we're pulling some of this data in 2025, 9,526 students in the district.

Um projected pre- our K-12 student increase decrease in the next three years, and they typically say the next three years are the most accurate data is a drop of 680 students, and so the percent change is 10.6 decrease, and then we also look at the highest projected year out in the enrollment study because we want to make sure that we're planning for that largest number.

In 2627, which is right around now, you're projected to have 800, 8,876 students.

So your highest year is very soon, and then you'll continue to see decline from there.

Alright, next slide.

So essentially what I just said, but in another slide and key takeaways.

We'll go to the next one.

All right, capacity data.

Elementary schools, 4,224 students.

We calculated the capacity.

They're under capacity, they're about 78% utilized.

Projected high enrollment for elementary students is 4,185.

And then the projected enrollment as far out as the study is projecting in 2034 35 is 3,978.

So you're seeing the decline underutilization.

Same with the middle school, 2,006 students.

It's 80% utilized, 2011 students projected at the high number, so not actually a small increase.

And then the furthest out year, there is 1,869.

Again, that going out that far, data is harder predict because you're you're basing it on different statistics, but three years out, it's real data, it's live births.

High school, 3,268 students, it's at capacity, about 99% utilized.

2,730 students at the highest projected year, and then 2,000 five 2,564 at the 3435.

So even though it's at capacity, you're seeing that decline in enrollment.

So it should work itself out.

Next slide.

And again, just the key takeaways I walked everybody through.

Alright, we talked about facilities, and that is incredibly important to understand what the prepares are for the buildings themselves.

But we also have to remember that these buildings have to support the education that's happening within these buildings.

And are they, do they have the right programmatic spaces?

Are they meeting the district's vision for education long term?

So we did a series of workshops to identify the educational vision.

And that equated to an educational specification that really outlines what a the schools and spaces should be designed for to be future ready.

And we did these active or these virtual present or interactive workshops.

About 40 district and school leadership teachers, students, parents, and community members were part of each one of these.

And it was really great to see.

It was really great to see some of the students on there.

But we'll kind of walk you through some of the key takeaways here.

Next slide.

So the visioning led to educational priorities, architectural priorities, and community priorities.

And you can see them listed in each of the columns up here.

I won't read through all of them.

But that gave us an idea of what those overall priorities are.

Next slide.

The top educational focus areas, there was nine of them that came out, so hands-on, project-based learning, student-centered learning, growth mindset, social emotional learning, mastery of core academics, STEM and STEAM.

If you don't know what that is, that's science, technology, engineering, and art and math, with if it has the A.

Enrichment programming, anywhere any time learning and professional learning communities.

The priority learning goals, you can see them up here on the screen.

So these were came out of that visioning session as to what are those learning goals for the district.

Next slide.

So we met with principals at each school to identify the key programmatic elements that needed to be addressed in each of the schools.

These are the themes that came out of those.

And then from the educational specification, these are the key recommend recommendations for design.

And so safety and security and welcoming integrated universal design and accessibility, create agable, agile, flexible learning neighborhoods, incorporate sustainable and healthy building practices, enhance technology integration across all learning spaces.

Next slide.

Provide hands-on makerspace and allied learning labs, develop indoor-outdoor movement and wellness spaces, support collaboration and professional learning, and design cafeteria and multi-purpose gathering areas and enable after hours and community use.

Support spaces, so that's your administration, your counseling, your health, your custodial.

One of the big differences in schools today from when some of the schools are built that haven't received some of the recent renovations is special education has grown so much, and the schools weren't designed for those programs.

And there is a need for a lot more smaller pull-out spaces to work with students that these buildings weren't designed for.

Next slide.

Technology infrastructure requirements, and then acoustical lighting and indoor air quality standards.

So the district now has this, so any project that they go forward with, they can provide this document to any of the design teams so they can understand what their expectation is.

Alright, so special education.

We're gonna highlight elementary school here.

A lot of the options are focused on elementary due to the needs identified.

But working with the district, identifying an approach to what needs to be designed for in the master plan.

And so in the yellow column are those intensive needs programs and the number that are needed at the different schools, ELL quantity of classrooms, flexible special ed spaces, also used for resource spaces, flexible education classrooms.

So one of the hardest things to predict is special education.

We don't know which students are coming in when with which needs, and so having it as flex space that could be utilized as an additional intensive need space if necessary, and then one occupational and physical therapy space per school.

And we just kind of gave a little description as to when we say that space, what does it mean from a or when we say that program, what does it mean from a space standpoint?

Next slide.

So the design language, this is one of the forums we did with the public.

We went through from the visioning guiding principles, so those are big picture architectural educational and community priorities you heard, school design patterns, they helped us craft a design statement for the overall master plan and any work that comes out of that.

And so they define a the future schools of Nashua through words and phrases they used were student focused, vocational and technical training focused, world ready, innovative, inclusive, diverse.

The common design patterns that came forward were agile classrooms, universal design and access, welcoming arrival, and secure entry.

And the statement that came out of that activity was an inclusive forward-looking-looking learning environment that sparks innovation and prepares students for the world.

And so if we pulled all that language we just talked about together, this is kind of the this is the design language that ultimately whatever option is selected needs to address.

And so as we go through the options, we had to identify okay, how do we start thinking about integrating these different programmatic elements into each of these buildings?

And so this is just a chart showing what we were able to incorporate in the different buildings when we say we're renovating andor expanding the school and the options that are forthcoming in the slide deck.

So looking at wayfinding, collaboration space in grade-level neighborhoods, major renovation.

Some of these schools don't have walls between the classrooms, so some of these options look at providing walls between the classrooms, so that would really trigger a major renovation in some areas.

21st century learning commons, a STEM and steam space, satellite dining, and I'll describe that a little bit because it's a little bit of a foreign concept sometimes.

This is really important for those students with higher needs sometimes, and just some of us that might be overwhelmed with a lot of noise or people in a space.

Cafeterias can be very overwhelming for different students.

And what this does is it provides a space adjacent to the cafeteria.

They have visibility of their peers, but it's a smaller space, lower volume, the acoustics are easier, but it allows them to be with their peers, but in a space that addresses some of those some of those needs.

Administration renovations and adding or modifying a stage.

So those are the things that were considered.

Alright.

I'm going to go over what informs the options, and when we get to the options, I'm going to have Jamie take us through the options.

So we talked about this diagram on the right already.

What is informing the options?

Some of the key date takeaways from the data that we just walked you through that inform the operating 12 elementary schools right now.

Elementary schools are generally underutilized.

Ages of schools vary, recent renovations for schools vary.

The schools are spread around the city.

In some cases, some buildings are in close proximity and others.

Building repair costs only are estimated, are building repair costs only, are estimated at 144.8 plus or minus million dollars.

This does not consider programmatic needs.

The estimated total cost range is between 218.2 million and 269.2 million.

Note that this does not include any programmatic needs that may be at the high school that is still being reviewed.

And so that I'll let Jamie go through the options.

And again, I like to remind folks that the cost presented there is today's dollar.

So obviously we all know what escalation is and we're seeing it.

So every you know we usually would carry three to four percent for each year as you start to get into planning out those repairs.

All right, so the options here are uh kind of highlighted across.

We have the existing is across the top, and then we have options A through E right now.

These are not all the possible options, but this is looking at a wide range of options, and based on that criteria that Lisa just presented is how we kind of start to explore these options.

So each uh each color there, the the blue represents like an existing building, the white represents more of like just uh general maintenance items that'll be ongoing sort of items.

Yellow starts to get into repairs and program uh updates being needed, uh, a gray box, a gray bubble will represent closing a school, and a green will be constructing a new school to accommodate closed schools uh where it's needed.

So, option A looks to provide renovations and the the baseline renovations and repairs or maintenance items to all the schools.

So you're maintaining all the schools that you already have for elementary and continuing to use them, but continue to make those repairs as needed.

Option B starts to explore potentially closing some schools.

So uh Mount Pleasant in New Cyrils uh again, using that criteria that was talked about previously, uh, would be closed in this option, and those students would be redistributed within the existing uh school district, utilizing extra space that's already in the school district based on the uh utilization slides we talked about a little bit ago.

Option C also looks to close is a is a different uh avenue of saying what what if you closed Amherst and Mount Pleasant and then building a new central school, uh excuse me, a new northern school to accommodate those students as what and the size of that school would also account for taking some of those students and distributing them through the through the schools as needed, and whatever's left over, you could build a school that size or size it appropriately so that the schools are pretty even within each other.

Option D closes down four of your older schools, schools that need the more not older schools, but more of the schools that need more repairs and follow upon that criteria we just talked about.

But then in that case, you'd have to kind of build two schools potentially, maybe a northern school and a southern school because you're closing northern schools and southern schools and redistributing some of the students, but again, the size of that school will be dependent upon how many students can be distributed and then how many would need to be accommodated for in those new schools.

Um those schools, just to recap those, that would be Amherst, Bicentennial, uh Mount Pleasant, and New Sarrills.

And option E starts to get uh again closing more schools that I think the additional school there, additional schools, um I'll just read them out.

Amherst, uh thank you, Charlotte, uh getting wear my glasses tonight, fairgrounds, ledge street, Mount Pleasant.

Uh, and then you'd build a new northern school and a new central school because that's the proximity of the schools that are closing.

So God read that.

All right, I'll talk to it.

So a lot of data on one slide, but what we wanted to illustrate is we are trying to provide a wide variety of options.

Um, what led to looking at how we arrived at these different options and maybe which schools may be considered for closure in some of these options.

This kind of puts it all into perspective on that map, which is kind of hard to see, but what we did is we drew circles around different geographic regions of where schools are close together.

So we kind of put a circle around the northern ones that were close together.

We put a circle around the southern ones that were close together.

We put a circle around, I'm calling it the west central and the east central that are close together.

And so we that's how they're grouped in this table down below.

So we're looking at when we start talking about some of these options that may close Amherst or Charlotte or Mount Pleasant, we're in one option, it closes all three and builds a new school.

We're looking at that high repair cost.

We are also looking at the utilization as well in some cases.

And so when we get to the central west, same thing.

Also in this case has a low utilization.

When we get to the southern, it's the ones with the high repair cost as well as the low utilization.

And then in the central east, it really is driven by cost of repair.

So in the description of each of those options, it will kind of walk you through, you know, we look to close X number in this the northern area, or one in the north and one in the south.

Because when we look at some of these areas, a lot of these schools start to get somewhat close together.

And so that's the criteria that we use just to identify ones that you may consider for closure.

You you you know, through this process, we may hear, hey, you know, what why don't we consider X for these different reasons?

This is just a snapshot in time as to where these options are, but we wanted to clarify how that came to be.

Okay, so uh this is again a recap of each of the options.

Uh option A, uh, all 12 existing schools remain uh remain open, and you'd end up providing repairs uh and program updates to all those schools.

Um that across the top you'll see the estimated uh rough order of magnitude cost again in today's dollars to accomplish accomplish the elementary school work is 114, 195.

Um the middle middle school high school, which is redundant in all these options, is about 62 million plus or minus in today's dollars.

So, all in for option A for repairs and program updates for all of your schools.

You're in the range of again in today's dollars, 176 million or 257 million dollars.

With the caveat that your high school programmatic needs has not been fully identified yet.

Right, thank you.

So then option B again, that is closing Mount Pleasant and New Cyrils.

You're down to 10 schools in that uh in that option, um, and you're redistributing the students from those schools to other schools, uh, but making uh repair repair updates and upgrades and programmatic updates to your other schools, um, all in in today's dollars, you're around for this option 175 to 218 million dollars.

Option C, um, this one closes Amherst and uh Mount Pleasant and builds a new school.

Um, and so the cost to have those 10 schools in operation uh is approximately uh 211 to 284 million dollars.

Option D, closing the Amherst and closing Amherst and uh Mount Pleasant, building a new school for that area, and then closing bicentennial and new Sarals and building a school for that area.

Um that brings you down to eight schools, um so long term you're starting to reduce your your uh repairs and maintenance on amount of schools you have uh and operating costs, uh but you for the total cost for that option uh in today's dollars is 297 million dollars to 324 million dollars.

And then finally, option E brings you down to seven elementary schools, you're closing Amherst, uh Charlotte, uh Fairgrounds Elementary, Ledge, Mount Pleasant, building two new schools, and that option equates to approximately 276 million to 313 million dollars.

The middle school, so in all those options included work to the middle school, um, again, the programmatic uh cost for the high school hasn't been fully identified as of yet.

We're still having those discussions, but uh right currently with with the repairs and and and some of the programmatic needs for for that have been identified, uh you're uh 62 million dollars for those options.

All right, so what we created was an evaluation matrix to be able to evaluate the different options.

What went into that evaluation matrix were the district master plan goals, the educational visioning outcomes and educational specifications, programming priorities and facility assessments and data.

And so these are the results of running it through that matrices.

The appendix has all of the backup data on that if people want to dig into that, but ultimately it's looking at of all that criteria, you can see the percentage that each of the options meets of that criteria criteria.

Remember, this is one piece of that flow chart we talked about for making a recommendation.

The matrices is one piece, but just to see how these measure up against those overall elements.

So what is this approximately going to cost?

We just went through that and all the options.

I like to be able to see things side by side.

So this is just a side-by-side comparison of what each of the options cost.

Under each of the options, you'll see the total number of remaining schools, the number of schools closed in that option, and or the number of new schools built.

And then just some cost savings examples, and I will I will caveat this with it.

It's roughly a savings of 1.6 to 1.00 per year.

So if you think about that over, let's say if you were to bond a project and you want to compare that savings versus what you would spend on a project, you would see a savings of about 32 to 36 million per year for every school that you close.

Now, once you start building new schools, you're gonna negate some of that savings, but again, just a reference point so that we kind of have that data as we're going through this exercise.

Just a little bit.

I thought that was my quote.

All right, next steps.

Um at the end, last slide here.

So the next steps are to narrow down the options and then identify the final long-term option for um for one Nashua, and then put together a phase plan to get there.

And then this is all just the appendices, we don't have to go through this, it's just for reference.

Okay, are you willing to take some questions?

Absolutely.

We'll have many.

Alderman O'Brien.

Thank you, Madam President.

What a couple of things I didn't see in this, and I can you know thank you.

It was a good report.

And may I ask sort of the president?

Uh I seen a couple of uh us aldermen who are wearing glasses kind of straining through the lens.

Uh can we have a copy of this so we can digest it?

Okay, but to get into my questions, what I'll give them to you, and then you can divide it.

Our schools are beacons of a neighborhood.

Nashua is a very neighborhood, is uh social private.

So closing some schools, you lose a community identity.

You know, there's music programs, they have the little uh you know, presentations and everything.

I've been to a couple of my grandchildren, quite nice, they're cute, you know.

The music stinks, but it's good.

You didn't say that.

Uh not talking about my grade future.

Yeah.

But anyways, you got that loss, and then also, too.

I asked the question, closing any schools.

What does the state recommend?

Uh, how long can a child stay on a school bus?

And I didn't see that.

And to me, that is very critical, you know, because uh, and that's also true, a loss.

What money we are saving, perhaps in closing a school, we're gonna have an increased cost and transportation.

So it cuts down any real benefit, you know.

And uh so do you have a you know anything with debt, and you can eliminate the uh the uh music program.

I'm not gonna eliminate the music program, that's important.

Um, all joking aside, to your to your point, we are providing the options for consideration.

Uh absolutely, we understand your sentiments about about the schools.

Um again, we're providing the data, considerations, and that ultimately is gonna have to come down to what does Nashville want to support, right?

Um, so that's why we provided an option where they all stay open.

Um, so we have everything from that to reducing the numbers drastically and stuff in between.

Um your other question was about transportation.

So one of the things as we narrow the options down, we're gonna have to work with transportation to figure out what what is the impact and how do we articulate that.

So we're just not there yet.

But follow up if I may.

Yes.

Uh would you look at that in dollars and sense of things?

Because it probably would be an increase in the transportation need.

We would have to look at what the impact is.

So I would have to talk with transportation to see how if they have the means to calculate that.

Okay.

And then my question is I think there is a state law.

How long and I'll let somebody else, you know.

I wouldn't want a kid on a bus for an hour on a February morning, you know.

We'll we'll look into that for sure.

Yeah, we'll have the questions soon.

You know, there it's likely that depending on which option you choose, there's probably some level of redistricting that needs to happen within the city to help limit how much uh travel time you get.

So and I agree.

Yeah, okay, Alder Woman Kelly.

Uh thank you so much.

I did come to uh your last time you presented this.

Well, maybe not your last time, but um I was encouraged to see some new data.

I do have some questions around data if I can get geeky for a moment.

Um the slide where you were talking about um the rough order of magnitude for costs.

So in the one where we keep the schools, is that predicated over the life of those buildings or just like what it's gonna cost us today?

So that the cost that was provided for that I think it's 144 million repair cost, that is a 10-year that that is that is an assessment of a 10 years of project.

So um after another 10 years, there's gonna be another set of boilers that need to be replaced, or another roof that's gonna have to replace.

We did a 10-year assessment of the buildings.

Okay, thank you.

And then if I could follow up, yes.

Um, my second question was around in the ones where you predicated closing schools.

Does that number assume that we're taking those schools off of the districts um you know, maintenance, all of that, like they're sold, they're gone, or is it a is it accounting for them to still be there?

Yeah, so the cost provided within an option uh reduces the amount, takes the schools that are being closed uh their repair costs out of the equation.

Just repair cost, not necessarily maintenance or mothballing, anything like that.

Uh yeah, I think that's correct.

So I think you're referring to the savings for closing a school that came from the district, and I believe that includes uh both the repair, the maintenance, the operation of the building.

So it's essentially taking assuming it's taken out of the portfolio.

So you're assuming that okay.

The reason I ask is because once they're they're no longer schools, then this board can decide what happens with them.

So I just don't know how long, if that was a case to go, how long would we be sitting with these buildings before they're sold or changed or whatever?

Yeah, I I think that's a that's a future question for all of you to entertain what happened, what happens with those schools.

Okay, thank you.

Waldman Morgan.

Uh thank you, madam chair.

Um thank you for your presentation, and I will echo that it was very hard to read.

So um I look forward to being able to see that and actually zoom in and see some of those.

Um a couple of things that I did not see, and I'm curious if this was just outside your purview, um, or if you could speak to your experience.

I didn't see any outside influences that may be directing some of these numbers.

The only one I saw was live birth rate, right?

We can't control that.

That's an outside influence.

Um what I didn't see is any information around like charter schools or private schools.

What is the comparison to their enrollment and their numbers, their usage, the rate at which they're opening or closing?

Is that anything you can speak to?

Yeah, that that's outside our purview.

So essentially we're looking at the enrollment and how it impacts your schools.

They are in that enrollment study looking at the construction projects in town and how that may be an outside influence on that as well.

Um, but we are not specifically looking at that.

Thank you.

Alderman Johnson.

Thank you very much.

Um what was your um enrollment shrinking to by what was it, 2030?

2035.

I off the top of my head, I want to say 8,165, but I could have that off.

Okay, because I'm looking at the study, the redistricting study I have in front of me.

I guess I'm a little bit I'm cheating a little bit because I was on the board when they did that.

And we were also going to redistrict, we were talking about redistricting the elementary school, but a lot of us felt at that point in time because of COVID, it was not going to be conducive because the students.

So I'm I I guess I gotta refresh myself.

I'm gonna ask these questions because these are kind of fresh in my brain here.

I know then when Mr.

Preston was talking to us, he factored in the f that we were building a lot of apartments, and with the apartments, most likely we're not gonna have an influx of children because it won the studio one and two bedroom apartment, maybe some three-bedroom apartments.

So how are you adjusting for all that in this whole study and what you did?

So the NESDEC who runs the uh enrollment projections, they look specifically at those projects that are coming online, and a one-bedroom equates to a certain percentage of students, a two-bedroom, a certain percent.

It's really when you get to that three-bedroom where you you see in percentage-wise a whole student or or multiple students coming into the district.

So there's a in there in their full report, I just don't remember the data specifically off my top my head, but they're using data to equate to that.

May I continue?

Could you send us some of that data for the boys?

The report, um, I don't know if the enrollment reports on the website yet, but if it isn't, we'll we'll make sure that we get it posted.

Yeah, because I think that's very important when you're considering this, because Mr.

Preston talked about, I think we could close up to about six schools, which I was not in favor of that at that point in time.

I'm still not in favor of it at this point in time because I think if you're going to start closing, you need to close one or two at a time and see how you're going to redistrict any of your students and see how that's going to work out.

I mean, my and I've said all along I think uh Mount Pleasant has to be the first one that needs to be closed because of the magnitude of work that has to be done in there because we've let that building go down so far.

But um I'm also kind of concerned with, you know, we take out one or two elementary schools and then we're gonna build one.

And and I have to agree with my colleague um Alderman O'Brien, because in this community everything is more or less community-centered neighborhood-centered.

So, you know, I but I believe that we're going to have to close some schools down because the the way the student population is declining so fast with this year, 9500 students, you can't justify this anymore.

And I mean, I'm glad I don't have to make this decision this time, you know, my former colleagues, you know.

Um, and I have the utmost respect for them.

Um, but um you just can't keep something open if you can't supply with the students in there because it's failing, because you're not I don't believe you're gonna meet the needs of all the students because you're spreading yourself out too thin at this point in time.

So I mean that's a hard decision.

And may I continue?

Yes.

And which elementary school still has an open concept?

There shouldn't be any because that's yeah, yeah.

Sunset still has opened.

Sunset.

Yeah.

Okay, because I know we we did um Birch Hill and we did Maine Dunstable.

I think there's two.

I can't remember the other one off the top of head, but they have classroom wings, and it's it's not fully uh the walls are not complete across all the spaces.

Okay, because this it is very interesting, this report, and I really like to compare it with the one that I was part of because it kind of outlined everything I think in the beginning for Harriman almost to kind of follow up on because yours is interesting, but I think when Mr.

Smith did all of this, I think it laid the groundwork on what the future was gonna have to be in this city with the schools.

Um like I said, when our and you're telling us our enrollment is gonna decrease, um, you have 8165, he has eighty-two fifty-two, so it's pretty close, you know.

Um we've got to be able to maintain the schools and not spread ourselves because we have to have good quality, not that we don't have it, but for the future, we need to be able to provide good quality education in in the district and not have to worry about that we don't can't get teachers or nurses, etc.

etc.

Thank you very much.

Welcome.

I have Alderman Lopez next.

Um so what's the further scope of the the ongoing scope of your your contract and your services from this point?

So from this point, um we will evaluate the remaining options based on different things that we're hearing from the different groups.

Um we'll work with the school department to make a narrow down list and ultimately come forward with a recommendation to the school board.

Umce a recommendation for a long-term option is determined, then that helps to set up the plan for okay.

Here's the long range plan of what we're trying to achieve.

How do we do this in a you know an approach to be able to continue to maintain whatever schools long term and then a near term, and then ultimately get to the end.

So it's really master planning out to that option that is selected.

Bob.

Yes.

Um I would hope that over the remaining part of narrowing down these plans, you are open to input.

I'm pretty concerned about some of my colleagues have pointed out that there is this cost benefit assessment of how much it saves as a school district to do things, but not that much consideration as to how much it costs the city, uh, what the overall impact might be, even in terms of transportation is one of the biggest budget items that we'd be looking at.

Um so those are a lot of questions, and then having it presented in a format that was extremely content rich visuals that we don't have a copy of.

Yeah, I I mean none of us would be anywhere near being able to make a decision, which is I know you're not necessarily presenting to us, but if this is the point where we start narrowing down options based on assumptions that are being made, we might need to see all of that data that you're talking about to understand the foundation of those assumptions in order to have any kind of confidence in them.

And I I imagine the school district or the at least the Board of Education is in just as difficult a position because they're not going to want to go through all this work only to find have us start asking questions that undermines it.

They need to be able to look at this information too and digest it.

And I think the public as much as we always try, there's always people who come out and say, wait a minute, I didn't hear about this, I have input.

There's a lot of information out in the public, and there's a lot of professionals that that have insight that we do need to make sure we're capturing.

So, like I said, as you start to narrow down or start to evaluate options, I hope these aren't all of them.

Okay, you're all set, Alderman Lopez.

Yes.

Alliman Sullivan.

Thank you.

Uh I wanted to thank you both for coming out tonight and putting this together.

I think that when we talk about something like this, it's very emotional.

And I think what you tried to do is present an objective report based on data.

And I think that the story you're trying to tell uh is that should or when the decision has to be made to close some schools, build other schools, whatever happens, this is a recommendation on what you should do.

So I I applaud you for that because I I think it as best you can, which is really impossible, but you tried to take a motion out of it because you all I don't think are from here, and you're you're looking at it from outside of the bottle.

So I appreciate that, and I can understand it.

But when I look at uh I I wanted to talk specifically about a couple of the slides that you had, ages of existing facilities, and I'm gonna pick on Birch Hill for an example.

Now, maybe I'm not reading the slide correctly, but the way that I see it is you have the total age of the school, and then you have a black dot at and that represents a renovation.

So being on the joint special school building committee, I know that Birch Hill was recently renovated.

So why wouldn't it have a black dot close to the green square?

Oh, it wouldn't be close to the green square, it would be back at zero because essentially that renovation is zero, pretty much zero years old.

The green squares was a rate the building was originally built, and then each dot going left is a newer uh renovation.

Correct.

Okay, so that's how I showed it.

So it's trying to show that some elements of that building relatively new, yet some of them are at that green square.

So there's a range of need, you know, on top of these zero years all the way up to 130 years ago.

Okay.

Follow-up, please.

Yes.

Thank you for explaining that because I I was reading it wrong.

Um and then on the other one, there was an energy use comparison, and now I'm gonna pick on Maine Dunstable because that seemed to be a little bit high, and I think that we just rent we just renovated a lot of that, including I looked at that boiler with Mr.

Smith back a few years ago, and um I was happy to see that we were gonna replace that.

So I was just surprised that that energy cost was so high, considering the amount of renovations that we just put in.

Yeah, and what that might be is typically we'll want three years of data after it's been renovated to understand how it's fully operating.

So when that data was provided, it could have been right after it opens with the three years we had was prior to that renovation.

Okay.

So that's something that's why we say we have to dig into those numbers because sometimes there are things just like that.

Okay.

Um more.

Okay.

Uh I don't recall seeing so far more for two on how to read slides.

So I'll go for a third.

And that I didn't see on any of the options.

You you had a cost in there, how much it would cost to close a school or build a school.

I didn't see a carve out on how much it would cost.

In your estimation, you are architects, so uh a wild guess on what it would cost to build a brand new school.

So that's in the options.

So if you look at each if you look at three.

So if you look at the option side where we break down the cost, it will show you if it says new school, it will show you the costs, keep going until you get, yeah, way down there.

And where we have one more, couple more.

Right here, these types of slides.

So if there's a new school here, yeah, it should be at the bottom as to what was assumed for the building.

That one didn't build a new one.

Okay, so that's option C.

All right, let's look at option C.

New North School.

Where?

Could we all look at options?

Oh, there it is.

Okay, 66.6 million dollars.

Yeah, okay.

And then it tells you I think on there it uh shows you our assumptions and school.

All right, awesome.

I'm done.

Okay, Alderman Down, that's cool.

Okay.

Uh first of all, I wanted to mention that I've worked for many years with Jamie and Lisa.

They've been involved in our schools for quite some time.

They started, I believe, with uh Broad Street and McCarthy School, Maine's Unstable, Birch Hill.

So they've been involved in a lot of our school projects and are very familiar with the National School District and our buildings, most of our buildings.

And I also wanted to point out that they're involved in numerous other schools across New England and and have designed it, built schools all over New England.

So they have a really good background in that.

Um, one couple of things being pretty familiar with all the buildings.

When you were evaluating whether a school should be closed and a new school built, did we evaluate whether the structural integrity of the building frame would survive a complete redesign instead of a new build?

In other words, much like what you did to Maine Dunstable in Birch Hill, we basically replaced everything, and it would undoubtedly be a lower cost than building a new building for many.

But that's something to consider.

The other thing is on new Searles, we just spent several million dollars on a project at New Searles.

And yes, I would say half of the school needs to have more work done.

They still have chalk boards in some of the classrooms.

However, we replaced some of the chalkboards in it because we rebuilt the front of the school basically.

We put a whole new fire alarm system in because every time we touch a school, we got to put a whole new fire alarm system in.

I don't care what we do to it, we get a new fire alarm system.

We did a whole new power distribution system in the school because we had to do that because the of the added requirements, and so a lot of changes were made.

And you know, that should probably be taken into consideration in that particular school instead of closing, it should probably just have the other half of the school have the work done that needs to be done.

Uh and there are no other schools nearby.

The other thing, the other thing I wanted to mention is some of the maintenance projects, uh, and I know you helped them with the CIC.

I sit on the CIC and and I know the priorities of the projects.

And there are some maintenance things that need to be done sooner than others.

For instance, roofs, you know, you allow roofs to leak, you have more damage inside the school, and you have the possibility of mold, and you know, so roofs are very important.

We just went through that with the fire stations.

So that's the consideration.

And the other thing that has to be pointed out is when you close a school, no matter which one it is, there's also well, if you're gonna build a new school, you're gonna have to can't close the school till you build a new school.

The other thing is when you close a school, we have to know what we're going to do with that building.

Like it's still costing us a lot of money for Elm Street that we closed because it reverts to the city.

Now, in that particular project, we're going to be tearing it down and building new houses.

So that's a button.

So if you close Mount Pleasant, we have to have another use.

So until that use is identified and it comes to fruition, there is a cost to the city.

Is that considered in your savings in closing Mount Pleasant?

I'll answer that one right now.

Not at this time in that number, it was a general number if you close a school, the impact to the school district.

It didn't necessarily not take that into account at this time.

And the other thing I wanted to point out is on the energy numbers that we were looking at.

You're right.

We don't get new numbers for about three years, like and we had nothing on McCarthy.

McCarthy has a full solar array on the roof.

There's a lot of solar rays up there.

Penetuk has solar rays on and we don't have the three years of data on that yet.

So some of the things we've done for energy efficiency, like the high schools, we had a major uh program to improve the lighting in the school to save money, and that hasn't been three years, I don't think, Sean.

Oh, close.

So uh many times Sean and I have gone through the numbers, especially on electricity, and it takes time to get the what the true savings are.

So those numbers might be a little little high.

So just wanted so people understand.

But uh again, thank you for the presentation.

I know you guys have done a lot of work.

It's uh quite a feat to go through 18 schools doing anything, never mind, just trying to evaluate them.

Thanks.

Alderman Smith.

Um, yes, and just thank you.

And it's adding to what my colleagues have said.

So thank you for you know, all of your hard work.

I would also love to have a copy.

I thought I had a copy of the slides because I was twisting and turning.

Um, one of my questions have to do, and I didn't see it, is this based on you know where we see the schools going in the next 10, 20, 30 years, um, and thinking about investing money in either new buildings or um improving their infrastructure.

How have you tied in the changing technology for this?

Um, because it is going to be significantly different.

Um I'd start, and I didn't hear anything about the cost of that, because that also will impact what the structures will look like and what they will, the technology that they will need to support.

Yeah, we did have uh our electrical team look at the buildings uh for data infrastructure, things like that.

Um so there's some costs associated associated with attention to that.

Uh not full scale, it's just kind of bringing the buildings up to today's standard.

Um, going in the future, we may not know what that technology is.

Uh so it's it's hard.

Technology changes so rapidly as as all of us know.

Um, we don't know what AI is gonna do for for technology around the world.

So um we've accounted for what the school's uh uh current model is for this district for the school buildings, okay.

Um and I don't If like I want to have a follow-up question because you're right, we can't predict the future, but I'm thinking whatever we put in there today, as we know it's gonna be outdated probably in three years, three, five years.

Right.

So the star concern is the amount of um the cost for technology sometimes can like be more than actual cost of the building, um, depending on the fiber optics optics and things that you need to do underground, etc.

So I'm greatly concerned regarding that, and that the schools being able to, you know, not completely be ahead, but at least stay in step, because I think thinking about today's technology, then it already would be behind.

So, what one of the things that we do when we look at uh adapt or adjusting a school for technology, obviously that we talked about bringing it up to the current, we also provide additional pathways so it's easier to rerun without disrupting all the work that had just been done on the project.

So that is one way that we can plan ahead because you're right, we may need to, you know, in so many years change it out to be at the next standard, but the more that we can make it flexible to be able to run all that technology easier through the building is is something we look to do as well.

Also, um just thinking about our programmatic uh visioning sessions, there was a lot about uh looking forward to flexible classrooms, adaptability, flexibility of classrooms in the future.

So providing these spaces allows for flexibility and adaptability of of future teaching, uh, which ties directly into the technology side of things.

Um, and then my other follow-up question, just based on um you know current trends and education, especially around special needs, um, and the increasing demand that is definitely going to be there, and that's not gonna go away anytime soon.

With us looking at the potential of closing some buildings, how are we looking at making sure that the remaining schools are set up or have the capacity for providing special needs services and having um areas such as sensory classrooms and things of this nature?

That's a really really good question.

And what one of the slides spoke to special ed because we wanted to really drill in, drill down and figure out what is needed, and then how do we provide some flex spaces so that you know once it's built, oh no, all of a sudden we have an increase.

What do we do?

Um, and that's where we see you know the best-laid plans can go awry without having some flex space to grow in, and those are the programs that we see growing exponentially.

Um, and they have different space requirements, they have different need requirements.

There's different types of spaces that are needed.

So in that chart, you'll see the assumptions that are not the assumptions, but the design outline as to what will be considered.

If a school closes, then we need to find that same number in the remaining schools.

So it's a total number that needs to be accounted for.

So whatever option is to move forward, it needs to include that total number of spaces that was outlined.

Okay, so the building design, I'm sorry.

The the building designs are are are already looking at including these additional learning spaces that will be required for either quiet testing or sensory sound, etc.

Yeah, that's quite a few rooms in each building in each school.

Alderman Morgan.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Allowing me to quickly follow up on what I had asked about earlier.

Um, in the as you move forward in the rest of your scope, it would be really helpful, even if it was just an appendix to see any of those outliers and those um data points that could be contributing to some of the numbers that we're seeing within our school district, the number of um private or charter schools that are in the area, the number of that have opened within the past X years that you seem appropriate, um, the amount that may have closed, and what those projections look like moving forward in the same comparison as the timeline for this the 10 years, and any other data points that you think would be um contributory that we may not have even discussed.

Thank you.

Alderman Senate.

Thank you, Madam President.

Uh, thank you for the presentation.

It's a heck of a lot of information.

Um I had a question here, and and it could be contemplated, it could be thinking a little too far forward, but um just with the consideration of what schools look like today, with any of these plans that contemplate a combination of closure and new builds.

Um does this contemplate like an ideal square footage for a new facility, or would that need be something that couldn't be contemplated until you determine um like student distribution?

Um so in the new builds, we're taking into account a design number of students, and so that would be designing that space to I wouldn't necessarily say it's the ideal, but it's kind of what we target for efficiency.

Um, so it's making sure that we have that.

I'll use the elementary school for example, that 140 to 160 is really based on a lot of schools being designed to accommodate all the different programs, whether it be you know cafeteria, kitchen, gym, you know, mechanical spaces, the educational spaces, the thickness of the wall, all that.

So that's taking that into account.

So what I what you can do with a new build, um, and not advocating one way or what another, but what you can do with a new build is be more efficient in the layout and therefore have less square footage for that number of students, which equates to less maintenance because more square footage you have, the more maintenance you have.

I don't know if that answers your question.

Oh, so sort of, yeah.

I mean, I I guess the the real crux of my question is to ideally like envision what size a new build would be.

We would first need to know, hey, what plan we're going with, and then which students would be pulled from which schools and sent where, wouldn't we?

Yeah, I think I think you're right.

I think some of that it is related to what we talked about earlier about the redistribution or uh redistricting of the of the school and see where they go.

So if you there is an option in there where you um take you close two schools and move students to the other remaining schools, which would um but if you were trying to uh close another other another set of two schools, you're gonna have to know which ones are going where to find out what size that school gets built.

So it does need some level of redistricting considerations.

We've made an assumption based on the our knowledge of what's what the potential option might be, and so that's why you see a new cost for a school in there, but we're a little conservative, and maybe it can come down depend on where those students end up going.

Thank you so much.

Alderman Marvin.

Thank you in person.

Uh as a as a kid who went through some of this in uh in the 60s, uh our high school ended up uh going away, and we moved into the what was then the new high school as junior high school kids, and we spent all of our uh all of our junior high and high school time in one in that one building.

But what strikes me about this, first of all, thank you.

Oh my gosh, saying we got a lot of data is an understatement.

As a data guy, I was okay with that, but yeah, I'll spend some time with every one of these sheets going over it.

Um thank you for all that hard work.

Um what my question is is about feasibility.

Is there any way to rank the feasibility of each of these plants?

That is because building one school in Nashua is a big deal.

Building two schools in Nashua is obviously a bigger deal, and what happens to the kids that are going to transition and the kids who are moving away and all of the movement of students that have fixed the feasibility of doing it, and did you factor any of that into the cost when you said, well, we're gonna we're gonna build one high school and it's gonna cost this much.

Did you factor in the cost of the kids who have to move and to Mike's question?

The cost the one of the first easy costs is the cost of the um energy that it takes to get the schools from to get the kids from point A to point B.

But there's there are as a kid, like I said, as a kid went through it, there's a lot more that goes into the feasibility of choosing a plan depending on uh how much changes.

In other words, the stuff that that's only going to build one school is easier than this than the stuff that's gonna build two.

So could you rank uh each of the feasibility of those?

And did you do any cost estimates of the changes?

So um right now the cost estimates are based on the improvements to the building.

Those factors have not been considered at this time.

We're looking at the variety of options, and so then you know, listening to tonight and other community feedback, what are some of those other criteria that need to be considered and and weighed into feasibility, transportation and and other things we've heard here tonight, those would be in the net next steps and and definitely conversations having with the district because they they would be able to weigh more in on those aspects that are non-building related.

Thank you.

Alderwoman Kelly.

Thank you so much.

So my question is uh a bit, thank you, but I know that today the open enrollment bill got tabled at State House, but I'm wondering if there's any way you can model or consider if open enrollment were to happen, what you might do differently with the plan.

Because I imagine a brand new school might be a pretty great draw if we have open enrollment, and as you know, if they don't move here, we don't get the property taxes that go with it.

Yeah.

I I don't know as we can say that without the the knowledge of what until the bill gets either gets passed or doesn't get passed.

I know that we have spoken with the school district about um what that may or may not look like, but it's hard to I know the bill's already kind of gone through a couple of rounds of uh uh changes, so it's it's really hard to define that at this moment.

Yeah, my understanding is I was killed for this this term, but that doesn't mean it's not coming back.

Alderman Lopez.

Um so I was listening to some of my uh colleagues' comments and kind of reflecting on my own.

So um first I want to say if Alderman Dowd gives you an endorsement, um, it's good enough for me because I was on the joint specialist school building briefly for him.

I was already impressed with Herman's work in general, but I mean the the kind of credibility that he's pointing out is something you can't really just open with because it sounds like you're bragging.

Um so I want that context um to be out there as I as I approach this.

But it occurred to me that when I was looking at it, I was kind of wondering why we were looking at options that in my mind were already basically close schools and build more, or close schools and don't build more.

And where was the I mean, or just throw money into the buildings we have and hope that it gets better.

Um I wanted to to credit the attempt at a capital improvement plan because I think that is probably a paradigm shift.

We have acknowledged as a city that we need to do a lot more in school building maintenance and providing the adequate funding to to actually make sure these buildings stay in in good condition.

Um I don't know that we could have necessarily anticipated structural changes that would have been necessary, like smaller room sizes, particularly for special education.

We probably could have predicted that.

But a lot of the security changes and those types of things that we might have to do with the onset of school-based violence, that I mean you have to be kind of a nightmare uh imaginary to look at that.

So there's some things I think we can predict, and some things I think we just have to be able to react to.

And I think ultimately part of this exercise is gonna be making sure that if we do tell the city of Nat or the people of Nashua that they're gonna need to foot the bill for new buildings and new constructions, we better couple that with, and this is how we'll take care of them.

So knowing that Harriman does a lot of work with our schools and with surrounding schools, um it's uh I guess my question is do you see a preference?

You does your organ does your company have more experience with building new than remodeling or reconditioning?

We do say it's about even, and then in that context, what do you usually see communities in our situation lean towards?

Yeah, great, great question.

I would say we're about 50-50 on both.

We have a lot of renovation expansion experience, we also have a lot of new build experience.

And it really comes down to when we see a decision being made, it's based on what's right for the community.

One of the things I'll point out is when when you build a new school, think of it as resetting the clock on all those facility needs.

So now it's gonna be another 20 to 30 years before you have to do any of the major work to that building.

It sometimes helps you rebalance your portfolio so that you can spread out the repair costs going into the future.

So you don't necessarily get a restart on a renovation expansion on everything.

You do on a lot of things.

So there's there's merit to both approaches.

It's really looking at the overall picture and saying, okay, if we were to renovate all these schools, well, what's going to be the timeline?

Are we going to have to renovate all of them again in 20 to 30 years?

And what does that look like versus if we start to think about maybe replacing some schools less overall square footage for the districts to take care of what does that look like in regards to the different times you have to think about doing those repairs?

Well, yes.

Um, I don't know if it's in the scope of your work.

Um, given your experience, I guess I wouldn't be surprised if as we start to proceed towards any kind of decision or determination.

Um would you be a part of, or do you think you have the expertise to you know advise the school board really, because I think they have to make the decision about how to do things like um rebuilding PTOs or sports teams or groups if you're moving, making a significant identity change and relocation to a school, what would those costs look like too?

Is that something that you have experience with, or is that something we're gonna need to just keep in mind and be mindful of?

I don't think we've uh specifically helped identify the um the cost of those specific pieces you just mentioned, but I will say that McCarthy is a school that had to rebuild an identity.

We were part of that process.

We helped the school district where we can um you know identify colors and team, you know, the team logos we helped not build the logo, but all these different parts and pieces we were involved with things.

It's really a that's still a community and a school district entity that really decide on like what you know what is the name of the school gonna be, what is the uh mascot going to be, and and uh we need to buy new jerseys and things like that.

But but yes, we have some familiarity with the process.

Yeah, I'll also mention we we've been involved in projects where they have closed three schools and brought them together in a new school, and so they included all of the new schools in determining what is the mascot.

They included the community in naming the school.

Um, and then there we actually built in a display case to honor the history of all three schools and their logos, their team accomplishments, all of that.

So it honored the where everybody came from, but they all work together to determine that.

Okay, that's encouraging.

I'm glad you have the at least some experience in that that area.

I don't know how we ended up with the Mustangs.

They're not necessarily native to Nashua, but I'm sure it made sense to the people who were working on it.

Thank you.

Alderman Tebow.

Thank you, Madam President.

I haven't said too much because I know the first decision won't be made by us.

It'll be by the Board of Ed.

So I'm gonna take it all in.

We're gonna look at the presentation again and study it.

And if I have questions, I'll definitely come back.

I think you know it's the right time to start to think about doing something just based on budget and based on where things are going.

So I'm glad we have multiple options.

I think the aldermen here that are most passionate have schools on the list that are probably uh up for one of those options of uh being closed down, um including myself uh who had one on on there.

So um I think what's gonna happen, I think when when you look at closing like five schools and then building two, you're gonna have people uh losing their mind out there in the world, um, mostly because well, we have five.

Why would you build two?

Um happens all the time when you think about well, you have five buildings.

Why would you go and then build brand new ones at whatever cost that might be.

We got that same with McCarthy.

You have Elm Street, why don't you just renovate it?

Why are you building a new school?

Well, it's better cost to build a new school.

People don't understand that because I still hear it today.

Um the other problem, you know, if if you you're closing five schools, then it turns back over to us, board of ed can step away, and now it's us.

We get five empty schools out there.

We still got one empty school out there that's coming on two years pretty soon, and it's just sitting there.

So now we gotta try to find a way to do something with five empty schools, um, or four empty schools or two empty schools or whatever.

So um the stuff that makes me nervous is this what comes next for for us here at the Board of Alderman.

So um, I just want to thank you guys for coming out.

I want to thank the Board of Ed because and the administration because I don't envy deciding on this, and uh maybe I'm still here at the time when we gotta make the next decisions, but I do not envy what decision you have to make because no matter what option you make, someone will be mad at you.

So I'm sorry, but thank you for the work you do.

I appreciate it.

I know it's it's a hard job, so thank you.

Okay, I'd like to okay.

Alderman Dowd and then Alderman Smith.

Yeah, just two things I wanted to point out was um I noticed on your timelines on Nash Raw High School South.

Uh I was on the joint special when we did the two high schools, and the only thing left standing in Nashville High South was one wall and the staircases.

So I would reset that to the same timeline as north because everything is new in that building.

Yeah, we can do that.

Yeah.

The other thing is uh when we when anybody builds a new school, there are state federal standards relevant to the class size room.

Yeah, and with a you know whether you have a kitchen and what the kitchen looks like and what the cafeteria looks like.

There are standards that you have to follow.

Um we've had discussions numerous times in those standards.

So uh it's it's just not you know you build smaller classrooms that you can't do that.

You're gonna have to meet the standards that the state and the federal government said.

Alderman Smith.

Um thank you.

So and I I know you don't have a crystal ball, I wish you did.

And um I see all the wonderful faces out there members of the school board, so my heart calls out to you.

Um when I was coming in today, and I um I was approached by a couple of my constituents, young folks, two babies in carriages, one toddler walking, and you know, they have a couple questions, not necessarily about this, but about something else.

And now I'm just thinking about them and the fact that they relocated to this area and bought a home and are planning on you know building their lives here.

So I'm just hoping that you're definitely working as close as you can with our school board and that we're looking at because when I think about the closing of a school, it's like the loss of a loved one.

It's pretty significant.

It can have a sign, you know, and I get you know this, it has a serious impact on a community.

And we are here trying to make sure we represent and take care of our community.

So I'm just hoping that everyone will keep in mind and follow up with those families because you know when people relocate to an area they choose to come here, they do it based on what?

Schools, you know, shopping, you know, the mayor, etc.

They're bored, but you know, they it's very important, and I keep thinking about them right now, and the impact that the closing of any school might have on them.

And I'm also hoping that we'll make the smartest decision regarding um how we invest our money.

No one wants to put money, I think, into a facility that actually we should just completely tear down, you know.

You know, if we need to start from the ground up, I think we need to start from the ground up so that we are able to report to our citizens, you know, the the best, why we made the decisions that we did and was the best at that time, and then we still got to figure out a way to pay for these things so that it doesn't keep falling back on the our taxpayers and property taxes because my phones are ringing off the hook regarding that.

So I just want to encourage everyone to keep doing the work that they're doing and to ask these hard questions, and you know, for myself being in education over four years, I I can't see why we have an empty school building when there's so much education that needs to happen.

So I hope we will look at ways to utilize these spaces, especially during the transition time.

Um, and so I just want to put that back out there for individuals.

I don't know about you, but we need plumbers, we need electricians, we need trade swells.

What are we doing to train individuals?

You know, what are we doing to bring that commerce here?

So I'm putting that out there on our educators because you are the ones that help to build these leaders, and we're gonna need the facilities to do this.

And these are ecosystems we're talking about, and it's they're they're gonna be data, technology-driven ecosystems.

So we just have to get ready for that.

The the days of, you know, I don't have to worry about chalk dust anymore, I just have to worry about yellow pollen.

You know, there's not you know, blackboards, we're not gonna see that.

Those are those are gone.

So I really want to make sure that you know, and I'm hoping that you're you're you're you may not be as smart as me.

Well, you might be.

Um, but that you're that your designs are brilliant, and so that we are getting the the best, you know, for our investment.

Um, and I know it's gotta be future oriented, but we're trying to plan now for 20, 30 years from now.

That's what that's what this that's our concern is that we are trying to plan for that without knowing.

So I think we just really need to make sure that the facilities that we're building are prepared to be updated.

Like the day we open up the new school, we have to start making the plan for its next renovation.

So I have to make an attempt to raise my GPA on my slide reading.

Don't worry, it's on a curve.

That's good.

Uh new Searles was just recently renovated.

Shouldn't that have a black dot at zero?

Yeah, just four for four.

Ask them about free.

The dots don't include the uh admin of the secure vestigen renovations.

Yeah, right.

Well, I don't have that on my slide.

Yes, I think it's the old slide.

Oh, I have an old slide.

This had to go to the left.

So we won't take that into account on my test coverage.

That's it.

Okay.

I want to thank you, Jamie and Lisa, for the presentation this evening.

It's a lot of information to take in, and um, I'm gonna open it up now for public comment.

But I want to thank you for your presentation this evening.

So the public comment period, we're not gonna be questions and answers, it's gonna be a true public comment period.

You'll have three minutes, give your name and your town you live in, and you have three minutes.

So, whoever would like to come up first, hi guys.

Jen Bishop, uh Board of Education President, uh 45 East Dunstable Road, Nashua.

We don't need more.

Thank you guys for listening to the presentations that we've been hearing for the last year and a half, two years.

The reason that we wanted to bring this to your attention is we can be as thoughtful and mindful and aware as we possibly can be, but without knowing where you guys are and your decisions about what the budget looks like, there is no plan that we're going to make that's going to match our intentions.

So, in order to bring this to you, we asked Harriman to put it together.

We actually were gonna have it at our board meeting, but thought it would be better here because this is kind of like when I tell my kids what do you want for dinner?

You figure it out, I'll pay for it.

If I agree with what they're ordering, right?

So you guys are the purse strings, you guys are the ones that are going to give us the approval that we need to go forward for us to make the plans that we need to make, we need to understand if you're on the same page that we are.

I heard a quote earlier today that was it was in regards to the mental health field, but same with public education.

Um people continue to ask to do more with less, and we need to shift it to we need to do more with greater intention.

So what is our intention with what we're providing our citizens?

When we think about the kids that you were talking about in our district in our ward.

I'm not so worried about them shifting schools, but are we preparing them adequately for the future?

And are our buildings able to sustain that?

Are we working at maintaining what we have, which is not ready for 2040?

Or are we committed to building our schools in a direction that the kids are going to be graduating and being successful in?

So I remember Miss Johnson always saying, let's go back to pen and paper, let's go back to pen and paper.

There's a little bit of let's go back to pen and paper.

We need to reconstruct what we're providing.

Are we building on brick and mortar that doesn't sustain it's it's not a foundation that can be brought into the future?

So, as you guys are discussing, I hope you continue following our board meetings.

Um, but we really need to be on the same page with where we want to go with our students.

We have a shrinking enrollment, we have greater need, we have more AI, and we're gonna have we're gonna have a multitude of different jobs in the future.

I don't like that.

All right.

Um, so let's continue to have these conversations together.

Please come and tour schools, see the difference between what Mount Pleasant looks like and what the brand new middle schools look like, just so you can see the degree of shame of change.

Um, because all of our kids deserve equity, they deserve to leave high school with this with the same adult opportunities, and we're only going to be able to do that with an adequate education system.

Thank you guys.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

And Heather has all the stats.

Hi guys.

Hi guys, I'm Mather Raymond.

Uh, I am the clerk on the Board of Education this year.

I also represent Ward One up at the State House.

Um, there were a lot of questions here about data and enrollment data and other school system data.

Um the Department of Education for the state of New Hampshire has lots and lots and lots of spreadsheets going back 25 years where you can find a lot of it.

Um, but I did a deep dive on vouchers and private school enrollment and where our tax money is going recently, so I have a lot of it at my fingertips.

Um somebody had asked about charter students.

There are 6,000 charter students in the state of New Hampshire.

25 years ago, there were zero because there were no charter schools.

Um, about a thousand of those charter students come from Nashua.

We have three big charter schools in Nashua.

Um there are 16,000 private school students in the state of New Hampshire.

Um, that's down from 24,000 25 years ago, um, even with vouchers.

Um about 2900 of the private students in the state come from Nashua.

Um, just interestingly, about 600 of those private school students in Nashua are getting vouchers at a cost of 2.2 million dollars a year.

50 of them, based on the EFA data came from Nashua school system.

Um, and as far as Nashua public schools enrollment, um our enrollment is about 9500 this year.

It's down from a peak of 13,000 15 years ago.

It was 11,000 eight years ago when I first got on the board.

Um, but if you look at all of the data together, we're not necessarily losing kids to charters and private schools.

We as a state are losing young people.

Like the birth rates are down, the people who are moving into the state tend to be older, they're in their late 30s, and they're not typically people with small children.

And I have lots to say about how we can have development and housing development that would support bringing children in.

But the bottom line is the fewer students we have, the less money we get from the state.

And the students that we have, the needs that they have are increasing.

So we used to have about 10% of our students qualified for special education, now it's well over 20%.

And as we learned tonight, special education has specific facilities needs that cannot be accommodated, accommodated in all of our current.

30 seconds.

So if anybody else wants any more stats, I have lots of resources.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Right.

There's a trend.

Rob Johnson, member of the Board of Education, Weathersfield Road, Nashua.

Um it's hard when we have to look at schools and say, do we close this school?

Do we keep this school open?

How do we make those decisions?

And I commend Harriman for this report because it's been quite an undertaking.

I do wish they left a little space for decisions about schools and what you know, what school closes and what school doesn't, so that we as a board of education and you as a board of aldermen have a little more options to look at, a little more things to consider when we take these things into consideration.

As a person who lives near New Searles and who was a PTO member in New Searles and whose children went to New Searles, I would obviously be personally biased.

Not as a board member, but as a member of the community.

And as a one in Ashua, I do have concerns about school closing, that I move to the area to go to have my children at that school.

That I move to the area because of schools, because of parks, because of what was available to them.

And now I have two children in college who are excelling because of the education they got at New Searles, at Fairgrounds, and Nashua South.

And I commend the Department of Education and I commend everybody who's contributed to allow these children to grow with these schools.

The last thing I'll say is one thing is about if a school closes in your area is that your property value will probably decrease.

Playground sits down at the school.

How long would it take for a school like New Survey to sit empty before something is done?

How long will it take for Mount Pleasant to sit empty before something is done?

How long will it take for bicentennials to sit empty before something is done?

These are things we need to consider, and I thank everyone for their time.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm I'm Megan Lampier, and I'm on the Board of Education, and I live at 237 Brook Village Road, Apartment 4.

And I just came up because I wanted to point out to everyone on the board of Alderman that option B here.

It talks about closing Mount Pleasant and sending those schools, sending the children in those schools to Amherst, Birch Hill, Bicentennial, and a couple of other schools, and then the new Searles students would also be broken up into four different schools.

That is an ideal.

And I think that when we do make any decisions about what we're going to do with these schools, we need to put the needs of the children first, the children and the community.

So I just want to make sure that everyone is aware that if we have issues, the Board of Education, we're gonna prioritize the needs of the children, above everything else.

You know, another thing to consider is the cost of busing all these kids all over the city.

Um it's not a small amount of money.

And um, you know, if we're gonna be saving a small amount of money from closing a school, but then spending a lot of money transporting these kids, plus kind of you know, really damaging the community, um, what are we really gaining from that?

So um thank you very much.

Thank you.

My name is Sandor Salvi.

I'm a board of education, new board of education member.

I'm definitely going through lots of information in the last few months.

It's overwhelming for sure, but my concern is right now when we are building the schools and when we are basically closing any schools, it's going to definitely affect the communities and all.

We need to take a look at that, but we also have to come up with a solution where we can compete with the charter school.

If we are investing the money, we need to make sure that our regular registration should increase because if that number is going down, the cost per student is going to go up.

So we need to make sure that how we can increase that and how we can build a school in a way that there will be more students more coming to our public school because my both the kids got educated in the public school and they are doing very well, and I strongly trust in the public school.

And I strongly trust in the public school.

It's the equal opportunity for every kid.

They can go to the school and they can be whatever they want.

But we need to take this decision very seriously.

Maybe sometimes tough, but we need to make sure that we are working for the general population a lot.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, I don't see anyone else coming forward.

Okay.

Chesley Marvin 10 Mary Anlain, I'll keep it PC today.

I'm really glad to see that we're having these conversations here at the Board of Aldermen before any decisions have been made on the board of ed.

I really appreciate these upfront conversations, all the really good questions that are coming from you guys.

Anyway, what did I come up here to say?

I hear everybody talking about building these newer, better schools and thinking about outcomes for the future and all this awesome technology.

While we do need to be concerned with that, as a parent of two kids under four years old, what doesn't concern me is that they're you know growing up with the technology they'll need for the future.

What concerns me is that we're leaving behind the fabric of schools that makes that makes them successful, right?

Our charter schools are not stealing students because they have the best smart boards, they're stealing students based on ideologies, right?

Kids that are getting outside to play for recess.

Using your hands to write on pen and paper and those chalkboards, everybody's trying to get out of the classrooms for some reason.

So I I'd say to make good schools, we don't need to build new ones, we need to really focus on the aspects of Nashua that we have that are our bread and butter that brings value to our communities, these neighborhood schools where kids can walk to school, ride their bikes to school.

These are all very healthy things for the brain and help them learn.

Um and then Cyril's hopeful, right?

Uh it does concern me in the Harriman study that my kids could potentially be bust across the highway to one of four, you know, two different schools across the highway, two different schools somewhat closer in my neighborhood, and the lack of clarity, thank you, surrounding um the potential options for what happens after the school is closed, is um something that I'd like to see in these discussions a bit more before the decisions are actually made, and we have to essentially live with whatever the outcome is.

So if there's a way for the alderman and the board of ed to continue to work together on discussing, okay.

Well, if we have these favorite options, favored options, hopefully that's keeping them all open.

But say we did want to close a school.

What do we imagine as a city that looks like 30 seconds?

And we should be thinking about the benefit we're returning to that community when we take something away.

Um, as a community member, I love the holistic view before I can really weigh in on it, and until I have that perceived benefit to the city and to our students.

If I take, you know, if you take something away from them, what are they getting back for it?

I would not be in support of closing any schools.

So thanks for your time.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Yeah, it keeps chilling.

But I just wanted to kind of speak to the I'm sorry, yes.

Uh 22 Mary Lane.

Um, I'll be brief, like I said.

Uh I just wanted to bring some transparency to and maybe some perspective and context to the data that you saw tonight.

Um, this is the third version of the Harriman study that I've seen.

Um, and I'll just be again transparent that I'm I'm here to advocate for New SERLs.

I'm here to speak to some of the details around your SERLs and how it's positioned and their repair cost analysis.

Um, so specifically, if you look at if you look over that analysis analysis and evaluate it yourself, um, new Surrels comes out at 146 dollars per square foot at a total cost of 8.3 million dollars, right?

Um, I think I heard it confirmed tonight, and I this was my knowledge beforehand too, that um that did not account for a 1.8 million dollar security vestibule investment that was completed in September, and I think paid for a couple of months ago.

I think you mentioned that in one of the last meetings recently.

So 1.8 million dollars.

Again, we're doing something theoretically here, kind of retroactively, but deducting 1.8 million dollars from an 8.3 million dollar total gives you about six and a half million dollars.

That brings the new Sales average to 114 per square foot, right?

Um that puts it, and and I'm saying this with the realization and the data that the the repair cost per square foot and the total cost drives the recommended options A through E.

New SERLs is on the chopping block in two of those options.

In my opinion, it's wrongly on the chopping block.

Um if the data is not current, and I understand that the Diddy's evaluation is at a time when maybe they didn't account for the security vestibule, so I'm just not saving room for that.

But like I alluded to, um, this is the third version of this study.

Perhaps there was an opportunity to make that point very transparent in the data.

Perhaps there was an opportunity to do a re-evaluation on some of the schools that maybe necessitated it.

Um so I want to point this out because I think it's important to scrutinize this to think critically about it, and and to uh just be well informed about one minute how that repair cost positions these schools, and it's consequential, right?

New search is I think wrongly on that on that shopping block list.

I don't think it should be there based on the data that should be current in this presentation.

So I just wanted to call attention to that and just overall advocating for the school and and for everyone to uh look at this with very clear eyes and scrutiny.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Anyone else?

Okay, seeing no one, we will close the public comment period.

Alderman Thibault.

Thank you.

I just wanted to ask you a question, Madam President.

I wanted to uh make sure in the future that any meeting that we have that is um a presentation have public comment at the end, please.

Um I think we've been very um you know true transparency would have been that every every person in the city or every uh war in the city knew that this meeting was gonna happen tonight with public comment because I could have brought in plenty of board aid people fighting for bicentenio, and I know Alderman Clee could have brought in probably the whole ward to fight for Mount Pleasant.

So I I think it's important that I think we we're not always consistent with public comment.

Instead of having to almost backdoor it into a meeting, it I prefer to have it on the agenda so that when we send out the agendas and we put it on the website that it's clearly on there.

People know we have public comment and they can come and speak.

I think it's important.

Um I think the way it was done tonight wasn't the way we should do it.

It should always be on the agenda for any meeting that's in this chamber, committee meeting, or special board of aldermen.

Um I'm hoping we can do that going forward.

Thank you.

We're done.

I am looking for a motion to adjourn.

That was Alderman O'Brien.

Thank you, madam president.

I make the motion to adjourn.

By roll call.

Motion to adjourn by roll call, please.

Alderman Ravan.

Yes.

Alderman Smith, Alderwoman Smith.

Yes.

Haldeman Thibault's a yes.

Haldeman O'Brien.

Yes.

Alderman Dowd.

Yes.

Alderman Sullivan.

Yes, please.

Alderman Senate.

No.

Alderman Johnson.

No.

Alderwoman Kelly.

Yes.

Alderman Morgan.

Yes.

Alderman Lopez.

No.

Alderman Wilshire.

Yes.

We have enough to close the meeting, so we're adjourned.

We are tuned at 9.08 p.m.

Thank you, everyone.