ORANGE — The 50,000-square-foot addition to Fisher Hill Elementary School is scheduled to open to students on Jan. 3, when the holiday break ends.
Students in kindergarten through third grade will move from the school’s pre-existing section to the shiny new building until the academic year concludes. Students in those grades will ultimately return to the other section, which will have been gutted and renovated, in the fall, at which point Dexter Park Innovation School students will be educated in the new addition.
Dexter Park, built in 1951, is set to be demolished in the fall and replaced with a wildflower meadow.
“It’ll be beautiful,” said Bruce Scherer, chair of the Orange School Building Committee, adding that the meadow will have a handicap-accessible walking path for students.
Scherer and Martin Goulet of Hill International Inc., the company managing the building project on behalf of the town, spoke about the addition’s features during a tour provided to the Greenfield Recorder.
“The school has all the latest in technology,” Goulet explained, mentioning electronic security and intruder-proof glass called School Guard Glass, which he said “can’t be broken through.”
The addition will consist of 30 classrooms, a main office, administrative offices, a physical therapy room and a family resource center that will be accessible without having to enter through the school’s main entrance.
“It’ll be a totally secure space,” Scherer said. “Orange is a poor community and there’s a need that we discovered in talking with teachers and staff for having a facility that could accommodate any variety of needs that families in need have.”
Scherer said the school also will have an expanded gymnasium, kitchen and cafeteria. The addition has three floors while the pre-existing section has two.
“There are a number of multipurpose areas that, because of the population of the school, they were never adequate, and now they will be,” he said.
Once completed, the expanded 97,000-square-foot building is expected to serve Orange’s educational needs for at least 50 years. It will also have an outdoor learning deck; a media center; and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) classrooms. As a response to the pandemic, the school will feature a heating, ventilation and air conditioning system that moves air through ultraviolet light to kill bacteria, Goulet said.
Dexter Park, which serves students in grades four through six, has been designated in the lowest rating tier by the Massachusetts School Building Authority, a quasi-independent government authority. Voters approved funding a feasibility study in 2018 to study Dexter Park and come up with options to repair or replace it.
In 2020, residents voted to ratify a Proposition 2½ debt-exclusion override they had passed the previous week at Town Meeting to start the Fisher Hill addition and renovations. Goulet and Scherer noted the project will cost $45 million, with Orange on the hook for roughly $22 million.
Scherer said the new addition is the talk of the town.
“Everybody wants to see it,” he said, adding that the Orange School Building Committee is trying to schedule an open house on a Saturday in January.
“Whoever gets Classroom 209,” he said with a laugh walking into the room with a nice view, “they really get the pick of the litter. … I mean, who wouldn’t want to have this to be their workspace?”
Reach Domenic Poli at dpoli@recorder.com or 413-930-4120.