Frequently Asked Questions

Please educate yourself.  Of all the documents available at the Brookline Town Budget site, please read the relatively short FY2016 - FY2021 CIP - Preliminary (Town Administrator Memo to the Board Selectmen) message. It is clear that Devotion plus the  High School and Elementary School projects will put severe strain on the Town's finances. All without solving the enrollment growth problem.

1. Doesn't Renovating Devotion solve the overcrowding in our Schools?

• No - this project only nets 5 new classrooms.
• There are already 40 active classrooms at Devotion. Yes, the school was built as a 3 section school. Yes, like many other schools it has already had classrooms added on. But today there are 40 active classrooms. When the project is done, there will be 45 classrooms. Net 5 new classrooms, 4 sub-optimal improved classrooms, and 36 renovated classrooms.   
• The Schools say we need 20+ more classrooms to handle enrollment growth.
• The Expand-In-Place plan of Devotion and Driscoll, even if followed, would still not solve the problem.
• Devotion needs a renovation, as do several schools in Town (Pierce most of all; Baker is looking at Hancock Village, etc), but most urgently the Town needs more classrooms.
• The School Committee is now suggesting that crowding at other buildings (e.g. Pierce) may be better handled by finding additional capacity elsewhere instead of redoing the entire building. Relatively minor fixes (e.g. heating) can be done for substantially less money - modest investments, coupled with relocating the 160 7th & 8th graders to OLS, will let the current school continue to operate until additional capacity long term solution is found.

2. But there is a master plan guiding how the Schools are going to address the enrollment situation, isn't there?

No.

• The Schools Master Facilities Plan, updated in 2011, has largely been abandoned, even though it is included with each application to the State funding agency, MSBA, as the Schools official "master plan". That Master Plan has Pierce as the school most in need of a renovation.
• The BSPACE report, back in 2013, said the way to address enrollment growth was to Expand-In-Place Devotion and Driscoll. Even in making that recommendation, it was known that those projects would not handle even a slight increase in enrollment beyond their original projects. Now growth has continued to accelerate & the state has said no to the Driscoll project. 
• The next piece in the ad-hoc plan is the Site Survey being performed by Civix Moxie along with the Town Planning Department, evaluating both public and private land for sites to expand school capacity, either via a 9th school site or expanding existing elementary schools. This report is due before the May elections. Let's hope the results are published before the vote so voters have all the information they can before voting. 

3.  But the new classrooms make sense, don't they?

• After the renovation, Devotion will be one of the 10 largest elementary schools in the state, joining Brockton and Methuen with elementary schools in the top 10.
  
• With over 1000 children, Devotion will struggle to "make a large school feel small".  Will the nurse, principal and librarian know all those kids names? 
  
• The renovation will create an inequitable experience compared with the smaller schools in Town (Runkle, Heath, Driscoll, Lincoln). 
  
• The project is an example of leadership that has lacked planning foresight. We may have to build a ninth school in any event, where better planning could have resulted in a less costly Devotion project and a new school that would mitigate the trend towards mega-schools embraced by the School Committee.

4. Don't we have money saved up in the CIP to pay for Devotion?

• No - There is no pile of money saved up in a bank account. In effect, we've paid down our credit card enough to be able to borrow more.
• The cost of the Devotion project is now estimated at $120 million, up from $55 million just a few years ago.
  
• The Town has set aside $45 million of borrowing capacity to pay for Devotion in the Capital Plan (CIP). The Town's share of the rest must be voted on via a Debt Exclusion override vote. 

• If the Debt Exclusion does not pass, Devotion can not proceed. 
  
• If you hear “the train has left the station on Devotion”, you should know train can not leave the station until we buy the ticket. This project will not happen unless the voters approve taking on more debt.
  
• The Town estimates it can afford to make debt payments totaling $45 million for Devotion, having moved some of the $54M in the CIP towards paying for modulars at Baker, rental of office space for Pierce, and paying rent for the  pre-K BEEPs moved into Temples in town.
  
• There are major debt exclusions already in the Towns capital plan (the CIP) planned for the Schools – an expanded High School and a K-8 project (9th elementary or other expansion). 
  

5. But Capital  spending doesn't steal dollars from Operating, so this Debt Exclusion won't have an impact on Town services, will it?

There is only one pool of money in Town - the Tax payers. Back to the 2016-2020 CIP Budget Message, the Town Administrator warns: 

When looking out even further than the six-year horizon, there is an even greater reduction in the revenue-financed portion of the CIP in FY23, due in large part of the BHS project coming on line. This is important to note because the revenue-financed portion funds the mostly-smaller dollar projects in the CIP, along with the annual $1.6 million - $1.8 million street rehab item. So a reduction in this portion of the financing stream leads to pressure on those projects.

To summarize that - this amount of debt leads to pressure on all smaller town CIP projects, including annual street rehab.

That is, the high levels of Debt come from Devotion & High School & a K-8 School. And "pressure" means - there won't be a way to pay for them. Devotion really does rob the Town Capital pool of dollars to pay for a renovation of a building that does not solve the problem the Town is facing.

6. Will we lose State funding for Devotion if we vote no on Question 2?

This is likely true. But doing the project does not solve the enrollment:

• The State is planning on a reimbursement rate for Devotion of only for 24%, an extremely low rate compared to other projects in Town (Runkle 41% and Heath at 40%) or around the State. This is due to design decision and preservation components that the State will not reimburse.

• Brookline could likely buy land and build a new more economically efficient 9th School with 27 classrooms for less than $70 million dollars. In addition the State generally funds new construction at a higher reimbursement rate than renovation work.
  
• Taking money for Devotion makes it less likely Brookline will get additional help from the State for future projects like the High School or a ninth elementary school.
  
• Why did the State say no to the Driscoll School SOI project? Even the Chair of the Selectmen acknowledged "We may have gone to that well [the State] too many times".
  
• The leaders of Brookline could use their "special relationship" with the MSBA to explain the new situation, that enrollment has continued to accelerate in Town, that the Devotion project will not solve the problem adequately, and that, in fact, we need a new 9th school, and rather than blithely continuing the current path, and we'd like to proactively work with the MSBA on a new solution.