Council votes down funding order for $72 million in renovations at old EHS building
The City Council voted by a 7-4 margin against approving the $72 million in funding needed to perform renovations at the old Everett High School building for the purpose of putting a junior high academy in the building to help alleviate overcrowding in the school district.
City Council President Robert Campen, who called the overcrowded schools “a major crisis,” and City Councilors Stephanie Smith, Michael Marchese, and Guerline Alcy Jabouin voted against the measure, seemingly in response to the non-clarity on the issue of whether the Eliot Family Resource Center and the Broadway Boxing Club would continue to be housed in the building when the junior high academy’s classrooms (for 1,100 seventh and eighth grade students), are rebuilt for occupancy on two floors of the building.
Mayor Carlo DeMaria, and Chief of Staff Erin Deveney spoke at the meeting about the inclusion of the Eliot Family Resource Center and the Broadway Boxing Club in the renovated EHS building.
Council members have voiced strong support for Supt. William Hart’s well-thought-out proposal for a citywide junior academy at the old Everett High School building, but some councilors wanted a more-detailed plan about the future location of the Eliot Family Resource Center and Broadway Boxing Club. At the meeting, Hart again emphasized the dire need for additional classroom space to address over-crowdedness in the Everett schools.
Smith delivered an impassioned speech prior to the vote on the $72 million appropriation.
“I fully support the essential resources provided by Eliot Center which serves not only Everett but all the surrounding communities,” said Smith. “I’m also 100 percent in favor of a standalone middle school and have been for the past three years. I’m one of the biggest supporters of moving the kids out of the neighborhood schools and into a dedicated school building. But the proposal before us tonight, as we’ve heard, is not that. It is not a proposal for converting a building into a standalone middle school. No other community in Massachusetts has a middle school in the same building as a public gym that’s opened during school hours or a non-profit resource center with no guardrails in place.”
“A school should be a school,” declared Smith while also acknowledging that “overcrowding is such a huge issue in the elementary schools and the high school.”
Councilor Peter Pietrantonio said, “The kids definitely need a place to go. Mr. Hart come up with a good plan. It’s no fault on the architect, but we still don’t how [the school building] is going to be laid out. We still don’t have a certain plan on paper.”
Van Campen, who represents Ward 5 where the school building is located, called the vote “a hard decision for all of us.”
“I think Mr. Hart has put a good plan together,” said Van Campen. “I think the concern that we have that lingers is that this is not a complete plan that’s in front of us. The Eliot and the Boxing Club are uses that I think really needed to be relocated. What I know right now is we have a major crisis. We have kids in hallways, in closets. We have a real crisis as a community right now, and the solution unfortunately in front of us is not perfect, it is not ideal. It’s the only one in front of us. Pope John [High School] is not an option. We’ve been trying as hard as we can to repurpose Pope John, but that’s not in front of us, and this city council doesn’t have the power to put it in front of us.”
Van Campen said his concern was the Council “was going to vote on a preliminary, incomplete plan, and I have a sense of where this vote is going to go.”
Following the Council’s ‘no’ vote for the $72 million appropriation, Van Campen’s motion to postpone the matter to a future meeting was approved by the Council.
“I request that the [DeMaria] Administration provide us with a detailed plan as the relocation of the Eliot Family Resource Center and the Broadway Boxing Club so we have a better understanding as to how those uses will be either accommodate to this building project or considered for alternative space within our community,” said Van Campen.