Weston officials are dusting off an old idea about how to solve a school-space problem: build a third elementary-level school instead of expanding the two the town already has. The town is not proposing it. But this week, the Board of Education's chair told the board she is bringing an updated cost estimate for it to a joint meeting of the town's three governing boards on September 24, two days after the board meeting where she announced it.
"There's one thing that the Board of Ed chairman is listed as doing, which is talking about a three-school option, so please don't have a heart attack," Board of Education Chair Deborah Low told the board on September 22. "It is not reinventing a wheel. It is not another option."
The analysis dates back to 2017 or 2019, when the architecture firm Silver Petrucelli studied a three-school layout for Weston and priced it out. A board member asked at an earlier Tri-Board meeting, the joint session of the Board of Selectmen, Board of Finance and Board of Education, what had happened to that study. Low said she didn't want the question to go unanswered, so she asked the real estate and construction firm Colliers to update Silver Petrucelli's old numbers to reflect today's construction costs.
"Here's where that thinking would be if you put it in today's terms and today's prices," Low said, describing what she planned to present. She said the public meeting agenda should have described the item as a review of an older option, rather than wording that could be read as introducing something new.
A board member thanked Low for running down the old study rather than letting it drop, calling it part of due diligence "as we embark upon this journey of potentially recommending a new school under a hefty price tag."
The re-priced study is one of several items on the September 24 Tri-Board agenda. First Selectwoman Samantha Nestor is expected to lay out a general timeline. Colliers will add specifics to a separate facilities proposal already under discussion. Board of Finance Chair Michael Imber is expected to bring an update tied to questions raised at a Board of Finance meeting last spring.
The broader facilities question was already on the board's radar earlier in the same meeting. Chief Finance and Operations Officer Phillip Cross, presenting the district's 2026-27 improvement plan, said the district is working toward "a clear, well-supported path forward" on its facility needs, including the possibility of a new middle school, by the spring of 2028. That work is being coordinated with both the Board of Selectmen and the Board of Finance, he said.
Low also told the board she intends to propose that the town hire outside professional services to help advocate for the district's facility needs at the state level and to engage the community as the conversation continues.
No vote or funding decision is imminent. The September 24 meeting is a status update, and the re-priced three-school figures are, by Low's own description, decades-old thinking translated into current dollars, not a new proposal on the table.