Water-damaged ceiling panels in the library, broken sinks in the bathrooms, and a heating system that won’t work in some rooms are some of the most obvious problems at the high school for the untrained eye. However, there are more serious issues than what is visible to a high school student or visitor.

On Wednesday, October 25, 2006 a school committee meeting was held regarding the construction of a new high school. Phil Steiger of Steiger Engineering Company recently inspected the roof of the current building, noting a few problems with rust above the pool, gym, and cafeteria. "There are about fifteen locations on tall parts of the building that aren't set for snow drift,” said Steiger. “They've failed in some areas. In general, the roof's in fairly good condition with only about 5% of water remaining after a rain storm." The full report is available to the public.

“All in all, we found that the roof was in pretty good structural condition,” said Steiger. “The whole roof area, we couldn’t see the whole area, but of what we could see, over the pool, were pretty poor conditions, serious rusting of the metal deckings. We’ve got something like five years at best there.”

However, there is another problem in addition to the pool area. “The assessed value [of the school] is 12 million this year. If you have a building project, it cannot exceed 6 million total in [a two year period],” said Steiger. “When we start to get near the 6 million dollar number you have to worry about [the building being up to modern] building codes.”

Once the 50 percent of the assessed value mark is reached by improvements in a two year period, the school must be brought up to modern, 2006 standard building codes. According to Steiger and the school committee, improvements such as the pool alone are estimated to cost more than 6 million dollars to fix.

“This building will never be able structurally to pass [2006] building codes,” said Steiger.

Superintendent Paul Gagliarducci noted the problems as well. After visiting Framingham High School on an accreditation committee and noting the repairs they recently endured, Gagliarducci felt it was time for the school to seriously think about the repairs needed to the high school.

“Framingham put in 19 million dollars in repairs,” said Gagliarducci, but the accreditation team could barely tell. “They dealt with a lot of the issues we’re dealing with. They had to rip out their heating system,” said Gagliarducci. The school also put new windows in and made improvements to their library and science rooms.

Also like Framingham High School, the high school may face problems with accreditation. “The rubric, that is used to determine whether a school and community meets the standard for community resources, has the term deficient under the first two bullets for the school’s fiscal plan. One says ‘school does not meet applicable federal and state laws,’ and the second bullet is ‘does not meet local fire health and safety regulations,’” said Gagliarducci. “Clearly these are two bullets that are problematic for us.”

With the high school scheduled to renew its accreditation in 2010, according to Gagliarducci, the current condition gives some cause for concern.

“We are in 2006 and our accreditation is in 2010, we have 4 years,” said Gagliarducci. “It’s time to get something to get going again with the building committee. We think that it’s time we start to think seriously about what is going to happen to this building, either a major renovation or a new school. I’m hopeful that the building committee can start its work pretty soon.”