The Doherty draft Preferred Schematic Design

All 864 pages of it are online here, and this is what will be voted on tomorrow evening. I should also note that I was not at the last building committee meeting (postponed meetings due to snow), so I can't vouch for what was and wasn't said then, let alone what has come up in other places.
I'll say that the thing that really concerns me about this is it continues to be framed--including by the district itself, in repeated phone calls to families--that this is a vote on the preferred site.
It is much much more than that. It is a vote on the preferred design of the school, including what's included in what is being requested.

As you'd expect in 864 pages, there's a lot there (this is a report that could do with both page numbers and internal hyperlinks).

Let's start with the site, so as to get it off the table:

• Foley is fill and unstable soil (including ash); it would have to be built on pilings; using it would take the districts only stadium out of commission (and there's an extensive list of all the use it gets); replacing it would cost (per the report, p. 383) between $35-50M, plus we'd have to pay for demolishing the current Doherty ourselves (estimated at $5M), and none of that is reimbursable. 
• Chandler Magnet's back lot does get used quite a bit; it would make traffic and pedestrian traffic even more of an issue at that intersection than it already is; and the district has no place to put the 500 elementary school students that are currently there. 
• There are three options for the rebuild on-site. I think for those who have been following it, part of what might be useful to know is they've taken the thing where they were going to put a field on top of a parking garage out. The field use would be too restrictive. They have pulled together a few plans for other places for fields, since none of the on-site options give what everyone had asked for in terms of sports space. The major differences among them are not, to my mind, that different, but it starts on page 319 if you'd like to compare them. 
• There's also doing nothing or renovating, but both of those don't really do much that is needed.

There are lots and lots of reports required as part of the Preferred Schematic Design, of course, and so many many pages are devoted to things like soil testing and traffic studies, plus costing many pieces of things out. 

Beyond the sketches of floor plans, though, the part that I think is most informative as to what the thoughts here are and perhaps are not start on page 594 with the description of the educational program. MSBA makes quite a big deal out of the centrality of the program of study, or how education will be conducted in this building, so this is really the part around which the rest is formed. Here are my notes on that:

• as was noted at the last Worcester School Committee meeting, there has been a push in the district around 9th grade success. The building is thus formed around a 9th grade academy plan to hold those students largely apart.
• the push for "academies" that are being touted as for gifted and talented also comes to Doherty with this, 'though it is starting at Forest Grove before the new building is built. Like the other such programs in Worcester, it admits based on "advanced" on both ELA and math...which of course has no connection to the level of "giftedness" of a student. This one is to focus on biotechnology, channeling the students into fairly narrowly focused scientific fields in high school. 
• there is also the expanded (so quickly that the School Committee, already having voted on them, is only now vetting them) Chapter 74 programs.  As has been noted elsewhere, Chapter 74 programs are not full vocational programs. These students will have two periods a day of their Chapter 74 program. In addition to retain the engineering program already at the school, the plan is to add programming, craft laborer, and marketing and finance. However, the original planned enrollment puts enrollment over that which was projected and approved by MSBA and so is being brought down. The marketing program does not have a national credential to be earned. The programming course is to work with district IT; one wonders if they are on board with this plan? The craft laborer program, because it shares space in other such programs, instead contributes to what MSBA describes (p. 397) as an 10,870 square feet of vocational space for which they will not reimburse. 
• As I mentioned already, there is a description of "college and career prep" sort of courses. There is also an extensive section on AVID and plans for space around AVID's needs; I haven't seen data describing AVID's success or not. 
• Mentioned both at the beginning of this section and on p. 653 is the need for a 30-40 person guidance office conference room (mostly for PD?) and another smaller one. My understanding is that MSBA doesn't particularly like conference rooms. 
• I don't doubt the need at all, but it's pretty depressing (p.658) that we're building schools expecting that we'll need a food and clothing pantry.
• The approach to technology continues to baffle me: the plan per page 668 is for the district in high school to be "1:1 classroom coverage" by 2024-25. That's a LONG way away and 1:1 classroom coverage, described in frustrating detail, takes a ton of time away and is not the model that districts are using successfully with students. We either need to do 1:1 or not. 
• Aside from that, there are lists of types of technology, but the degree to which it seems integrated is oddly distant. What will it DO? Why will we have it?
• The media center (p. 673) doesn't ever talk about books. The media specialist--will this be a certified librarian, one hopes?--is also to be in charge of the making space adjoining the library and scheduling both, which is too much work for one person, particularly if we are going to use that person as an actual librarian. 
• The section on performing arts (p. 677) is expansive in space but not on coursework. Frustratingly for a school that offers not nearly enough access to music for many students, the only coursework add being mentioned is AP Music Theory. Yet a piano lab, and a black box theater (in addition to the full theater), and 12 private changing stalls in the dressing room and much more are all added, such that the arts space is a full 3850 square feet over what will be reimbursed. These are really conversations the building committee, at least, ought to be having prior to the vote. 
• There is a lot--a LOT--on athletics (p. 689), including photos of those who have gone on to play in college. There are charts of the highest participation rate in the district in athletics--keep in mind why that usually happens--with a long paragraph describing the team needing to play in gym not at Doherty as an "injustice" and repeatedly expressing safety concerns about students walking a half a mile to Foley for practice (in a district in which students who live under 2 miles from school are expected to walk to and from school). That plus the insistence on extensive on-site facilities and gym facilities is all...a bit much.
  And those two sections are larger than most of the academic sections put together...
• It sounds from p. 705 as though there will be in-house suspension, even if it is called the "coping room."
• Perhaps it is just the current weather, but the utility of an outdoor amphitheater (p.734) "supported by audio/visual" with a large outdoor projection screen is...again, a bit much. 
• Parking demands at the school by students are steadily increasing and the administration may start needing to decide who gets stickers. Doherty currently runs nine large and five small buses and...we should figure out how to get more students on them, I would think.
• The school has gone (p. 743) from 20 cameras in 2017-18 to a more than double 55 this year. And no one has asked anyone at any point about violations of expectations of privacy or what the district does with such coverage. The new building intends to provide log-in access to the police department, something which was voted down several years ago by the Worcester School Committee (p.744).
• And the school resource officer "requires," we are told a private office within the school "to conduct mediation or meetings with parents" plus a "separate and secure phone line."

The plan hits what needs hitting, for the most part. I think there are probably places where perhaps cooler heads should prevail. 

What I continue to come back to is that public bodies, like the school building committee, are intended to be the public voice and the public vetting of a significant allocation of public resources to a public good. What I haven't seen or heard happening is space for that vetting to take place. The makeup of the committee is imagined to be those who fill roles that give the particular kinds of specialized insight of one kind or another. Instead, we seem to get a line-up of "votes for the district" without a discussion of the relative benefits and challenges of a particular plan.

That weakens the process and it is concerning for where that puts us as a district building a building of this size and cost.