The Martha’s Vineyard Regional High School (MVRHS) Committee unanimously agreed to enter into a contract with CHA Consulting as the owner’s project manager for the overhaul of the Island’s regional high school building.
According to MVRHS special projects coordinator Sam Hart, the Massachusetts School Building Authority officials recently gave the green light on the contract.
CHA is a Boston consulting firm that has worked on a number of school projects around the state, including the Tisbury School renovation project, which is currently underway.
Now that an owner’s project manager has been selected, the search for an architect can begin.
In other news, the committee concluded its public hearing for the MVRHS budget for fiscal year 2025. While the hearing was closed on Monday, the certification of the budget won’t happen until the committee’s January meeting.
The budget is anticipated to be $27.02 million, a 7.65 percent increase. (The assessed budget, which takes into consideration revenue, is a 6.48 percent increase.).
“We’ve already reworked the budget based on feedback and based on new assumptions,” MVRHS Principal Sara Dingledy said, adding that after applying additional feedback and new assumptions, the budget increase could actually look closer to below 6 percent for the operating budget, and below 4 percent for the assessed budget.
According to Dingledy, the high school is expected to receive $580,000 in additional Chapter 70 state funding compared with last year, because of the state’s increased investment in schools. The state funding will go toward covering staff, including a new science teacher and a new school adjustment counselor.
MVRHS is also receiving federal Title 1 grants and Rural Aid grants.
There are some expense increases that are not covered by grants or state programs, including athletics, facilities, capital projects and transportation, and fixed costs like insurance, and contractual obligations. Among these, the largest increases come from the capital projects and transportation, like new buses ($783,262), and contractual obligations ($745,767).
Dingledy said the new budget would help to achieve academic and school culture, and other goals she hoped to achieve, like adding additional Advanced Placement courses, increasing the number of school spirit and pride events, and collecting data to fill gaps, like improving on chronic absenteeism.
At the Tisbury Town meeting in Spring of 2023 the High School Administration “promised” that they would be also including in the study to review having a Junior High School on the high school campus. If done this would maximize student’s educational potential and free up 25% space in the Island elementary schools thus saving each expansion dollars.
Do the voters want their children to have to go out of town for Junior High School (middle school in this century)
If the schools ran 7/24 there would be no need for expansion, save lots of money.