Below is Ken Pruitt’s (Town of Arlington’s Energy Manager) Webex seminar about the planned sustainability features in the new high school. Watch the presentation Sustainability is integral to the new high school design and has been a priority from the very beginning. Following are the three core energy-related sustainability features: build a highly energy efficient building design for an all-electric …
If you’ve been following the Design Development process, you know that the Building Committee recently completed the difficult task of trimming $24.7 million from the budget to bring the project scope back in line with available funds. Fortunately, with the thoughtful deliberations of the Building Committee and the hard work of the design team, the core energy-related features have been …
In December 2019, the AHS Building Committee made a number of changes to the project design to bring the estimated cost in line with the project budget. This blog discusses these changes and their rationale. To best understand all the decisions that were made by the Building Committee, it is helpful to look at the process and decision sequence that …
The project entered the Design Development phase in June 2019. During this phase, the design becomes more detailed and a new cost estimate is done. A first look in November showed a gap of $29.5M between the Design Development estimate and the project budget; further reconciliation reduced the difference to $24.7M. Over the course of five meetings, the Committee used …
Value engineering is the process of comparing alternatives and their associated costs, and making choices to keep the project within budget, without sacrificing educational priorities. It is an exercise that all construction projects use and it is required by the MSBA for all projects no matter how the project cost estimate compares to the budget. At each phase, an estimate …
This blog post provides an overview of the Detailed Design Phase of the High School Building Project. On June 11, 2019, Arlington voters overwhelmingly approved a debt exclusion ballot question to fund the rebuilding of a new Arlington High School (AHS). Approval of the debt exclusion vote means the project has moved to the next phase of the Massachusetts School …
Safety of students and staff, and minimizing disruption are the project’s highest priorities. The proposed school will be built in multiple phases on the existing site and the current school will remain operational during construction. In this blog, we detail the methods in which the Town, school administration and project team will plan and monitor the educational environment and safety …
Shannon Knuth has been a science teacher at AHS since 2015. While I have lived in Arlington for 10 years, my first experience with the AHS building was when I was hired as a science teacher in the fall of 2015. It took a few weeks for me to grasp the confusing and inefficient layout of the three buildings with …
Kent Werst has been a mathematics teacher at AHS since 2005. The current Arlington High School has many deficiencies. I am going to discuss three that have had a negative impact on learning in my classroom: poor climate control, inefficient building layout, and insufficient classroom space. The exterior wall of my classroom is mostly glass with four small windows, two …
Arlington Public Schools’ student population is increasing – with about 200 new students added just this past year – and the high school is no exception. There have also been significant changes in education standards over the past decades, mandating different space requirements; for example, smaller group classes for some students with special needs. These changes, coupled with rising enrollment, …
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