By Dakota Antelman — Dakota@concordbridge.org
A “disconnect” between Concord school administrators and middle school designers recently sent district leaders scrambling as they realized new lockers would be too small to use as originally planned.
Superintendent Laurie Hunter said officials were “admittedly a little sticker shocked” by the potential six-figure cost of fixing the problem.
“It’s definitely not where we like to be at this stage in the project and making changes like this,” project architect Jennifer Soucy said on November 1. “We’re going to do everything we can to try to rectify it.”
Executive function skills
Concord Middle School students have lockers in their current school buildings. They often don’t use them because they’re in areas that are inconvenient to get to during the school day.
At the new Ellen Garrison Building at Concord Middle School, officials omitted lockers for seventh and eighth grade students but reserved space for sixth grade lockers.
The older students will carry their bags with them. Under original plans, sixth graders would have to place their backpacks in their lockers and retrieve items over the course of the day.
CMS principal Justin Cameron told the building committee the plan aims to give the youngest students a break from lugging heavy backpacks. He said the lockers will also help teach executive function skills as students prioritize which items they’ll need.
“It’s an important skill that we need to teach our students,” he said. “They’re putting their entire lives in their backpacks, and they don’t need all of that.”
‘The vision’
The new CMS is set to open in February.
Late in the week of October 21, Hunter said Cameron realized the lockers would be too small for backpacks.
Soucy said the lockers are 12 inches wide, 15 inches high, and 12 inches deep. “I think it was just a disconnect [in] terms of what the design intent was,” she said.
“What we have won’t allow us to execute the vision,” Hunter told the building committee. “We need you to decide whether it’s worth the incurred costs to get us there.”
Building committee members got a tour of the CMS site on November 8. There was no clear consensus on the next move. The committee was scheduled to meet again on Thursday, after this edition of The Concord Bridge went to press.
Among options, Soucy said the committee could swap the small lockers for prefabricated alternatives. Those lockers would be 12 inches wide, 30 inches high, and 15 inches deep.
At 3.125 cubic feet, they’d be more than double the size of the existing 1.25 cubic-foot lockers. The catch: They could cost between $155,000 and $200,000.
A nettlesome timeline
It would take roughly 12 weeks for the lockers to arrive, meaning CMS students would start classes before installation. Crews would probably install the new lockers during April vacation or after the school year ends.
If they don’t go for prefab lockers, the committee could leave the small lockers in place. The decision would save money, and students could still unload their books, but Hunter predicted the lockers would probably go unused. “I think it will just slow down things, and the kids will end up carrying [their backpacks],” she said.
The committee could save money by repurposing lockers at the soon-to-be-demolished Sanborn School. Cameron said those lockers are in good condition and could fit backpacks.
Officials hoped to avoid using noisy metal lockers in the new CMS, though. And Hunter said officials were still vetting the Sanborn lockers’ size as of November 1.
Contingency costs
The small lockers won’t prevent the new CMS from opening as scheduled. If the committee votes to replace the lockers, they also won’t immediately push the project over budget.
Soucy said the project has $2.6 million remaining in a line item for certain contingency costs.
But spending money now could leave officials with less wiggle room if other issues arise, particularly as crews demolish Sanborn.
“There could be some unknowns there,” Soucy said. “That’s probably your biggest risk.”
