Looking Forward, Looking Backward
Perhaps you’re not familiar with school construction projects, so I should preface my remarks here by sharing that each week we get a progress report from the Hopkins School contractor. And if you haven’t been by the Hopkins School lately, you might be very surprised to see the vast expanse that is under construction, littered with excavators, drill rigs, rebar and--soon!--concrete trucks.
In this week’s construction progress report, I learned that “the first concrete [foundation footings] placement is scheduled for Monday at 12:00,” and the “drilling of the geothermal wells continues at a rate of two wells per day. To date, twenty-three of the thirty-six wells have been drilled. We anticipate the remainder of the wells to be completed by the end of next week.”
Meanwhile the kids look on--curious about the activity that takes place on the other side of the fencing.
Like the kids, I, too, look on, anticipating what Hopkins will look like when it grows 28,432 square feet larger than it is today. The Hopkins addition project is one part of a multi-faceted plan to address the enrollment growth in our public schools. As school officials prepared for the addition to the Hopkins School--that is, as we were looking forward, so to speak, we were also forced to look backward. Part of looking backward meant examining the original Hopkins blueprints and reading through old Annual Town Reports.
In the 1998 Annual Town Report, we found the early commitments to Hopkinton becoming one of the highest achieving school districts in the Commonwealth. Then School Committee Chair, Joseph Strazzulla, noted in his report:
“In the spring, all fourth, eighth, and 10th graders took the second annual set of exams given under the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System (MCAS) as mandated by the Education Reform Act of 1993. The average scores of Hopkinton students were above the state averages in all subjects and grade levels. However, the School Committee believes that our students are capable of performing at a higher level, and is supporting efforts planned by the Administration to strengthen the required skills and knowledge.”
The town should be very proud that over the past twenty-five years, the community has come together to make Chairman Strazzulla and his committee’s collective educational vision a reality.
In the same report, there is mention of a Special Town Meeting, held on Monday, February 2, 1998. “ARTICLE 1” asked voters to determine “if the town would “vote to raise and appropriate, transfer from available funds, or otherwise provide a sum or sums of money for the purpose of … the construction of a new High School.”
According to the report, “The fiscal year 1998 school budget increased by 14% reflecting an 8% growth in student population.” Fall enrollment reached 2,546 students, with an increase of 188 students from the previous year.
Why else might that 1998 Annual Town Report be super important to this blog? Because “September 1998 saw the opening of the Edward Hopkins School located off Hayden Rowe Street….” As I noted earlier, district administrators studied the blueprints for Hopkins; it was originally built for 600 students, with 24 classrooms planned and with 25 students slated to be in each room.
The 1998 Annual Town Report tells us that Hopkins School “was initially planned to house Grades 4 and 5, but due to overcrowding at the Middle/High School, the School Committee decided to have the fifth and sixth grades occupy it for three years - until the planned new High School opens.” We’ve come full circle: Hopkins, in 2027, will once again become a five-six school.
Reading through this history makes me wonder how people back in 1998 were feeling with all the change: the construction, the grade configurations, the budget stressors, the growth of the town. It was perhaps very unsettling. As Superintendent, I hear from people that what Hopkinton is experiencing now can also feel unsettling--a quarter century later and history is essentially repeating itself.
In 1998, when Hopkins opened to the fifth and sixth grade students, the school also housed the Pre-K program, because there was the room to do so. In fact, a school built for 600 students only needed to accommodate 454 fifth and sixth graders at the time. Some twenty-five years later, we have far outgrown that Hopkins building, a physical plant that was lots more than “roomy” when it first opened its doors!
The planning for the new high school seemed to follow suit. “On October 1, 1999, the enrollment of the four high school grades was as follows: grade 12, 120; grade 11, 133; grade 10, 139; and grade 9, 171, a total of 563 students” (housed in what is now the Middle School). Yet, Hopkinton went ahead and built a state-of-the-art high school (for many more than 563 students) that continues to make this community proud. It should be noted that the student population in our high school has doubled since the building opened in 2001.
I want to finish up this blog entry with a little deja vu-like moment, which again speaks to looking forward and looking backward. The Schools’ contribution to the 1999 Annual Town Report closes with this paragraph: “It is clear that Hopkinton is a community ‘on the go.’ Parents are extremely committed to the education of their children. The staff is committed to supporting ambitious learning for all students. Without a doubt, it is an exciting place to be.” This same statement could adequately sum up Hopkinton’s unwavering commitment to teaching and learning today. Perhaps it will assuage some of the townspeople’s unsettled feelings to know that Hopkinton has been through challenging times before and has come out on top. We can do it again.
For those of you who might be history buffs, the Annual Town Reports are a beautiful series of “progress reports” for this community. The town should cherish them, as they celebrate your commitment to evolving at the highest levels and to providing incredible services for all of your residents, especially your children.
And for me, I remain committed to looking forward with you.