a few facts on MSBA and Burncoat Middle

I'll save how angry and concerned I am that the Worcester City Council last week put a hold their vote on Burncoat Middle's Statement of Interest for a second week running, and keep this to some statements of fact:

• Communities are allowed to submit a single core project (for a major renovation or rebuild) as their priority project to the Massachusetts School Building Authority each year. They may not "send in them all and have MSBA pick" (that's a paraphrase, to be clear).
  
  
• The MSBA has a very strong tradition of allowing districts only a SINGLE core project at a time. For a very long time, and in most communities still, if a district is still in the process of building a new building, they will not move a district forward with another core project.
  
  
• Worcester is an exception to the above statement, because we have a history of moving our core building projects forward in a systematic way, and the administration has a history of completing and paying for projects as needed. Once a new building has been close to completion, the MSBA has forwarded a second project. This is how we started South when Nelson Place was still going up and Doherty when South was still going up; it is how Burncoat High was admitted to the pipeline though Doherty is not yet done.
  
  
• They will not admit a third when we are any further along than that.
  
  
• The city doesn't have the capacity to fund two new buildings at the same time in that fashion, in any case.
  
  
• When the state organization that will be picking up more than half of the cost of a multimillion dollar project does the organizational equivalent of nudging a community in the ribs and tell the community to send in the school that is contiguous to and shares systems with a building that they have already admitted to the pipeline, they are telling you something important.
  
  
• MSBA is always watching communities with projects to see if they are committed to the projects and acting in ways that ensure that they will be completed.
  
  
  

If you are concerned about this, please share that with the Worcester City Council.