Consolidating Weston's schools into three buildings instead of four would cost just over $115 million in today's dollars, according to an update of a 2019 estimate that the Board of Selectmen, Board of Education and Board of Finance heard at a joint meeting on September 24. The new middle school the boards have been discussing is in the range of $120 million to $130 million.
The two figures do not cover the same things. Asked at the same meeting whether the new-school estimate includes demolition and clearing of the site, the Colliers representative said yes. The $115 million does not include tearing down the existing middle school, he said, or replacing the senior center.
"It's a little bit of a challenge to do an apples to apples," said the representative of Colliers, the consulting firm that produced the update.
What the option is
Board of Education Chair Deborah Low described the option, which comes from an older study by the firm Silver Petrucelli: vacate the middle school, convert Weston Intermediate School for grades 6 through 8, and renovate and expand Hurlbutt Elementary School to serve pre-K through grade 5.
The question of a three-school model came up at an earlier joint meeting, Low said, so she asked Colliers to update the old figures. "This is not a deep look, it's an overview," she said.
How the number was built
The Colliers representative said he took the Silver Petrucelli report's 2019 budget for the option and raised it by 4.5 percent a year, compounded. He then added about 20 percent for soft costs, the expenses beyond construction itself, which the original estimate did not include. The estimate also carried the most critical repair items from a 2017 condition assessment of all four of the district's buildings.
What is not in it
The Colliers representative listed what the $115 million does not cover:
- Demolition of the existing middle school. "So that is not in the comparative number," he said.
- The senior center. The Hurlbutt addition would displace it, and "nowhere within that budget number did they anticipate the cost of replacing that program for the community."
- A fully renovated intermediate school. The estimate did not treat the conversion as a full renovation, so the building "would still have some issues and items that may not be addressed," he said.
He also noted that construction at Hurlbutt would take place around "a fully occupied building with your youngest students."
The size question
The Silver Petrucelli report objected to the option in part because the elementary school would be too large. The Colliers representative said that report assumed about 1,000 students in pre-K through grade 5, and that the district's November 2025 projections, read the way these evaluations are done, using the highest expected enrollment over eight years, point to "1,050 to 1,080."
Asked why the district's Facilities Optimization Committee had not recommended three schools, a board member who served on that committee said a full study of a three-school district was never done. "We never had a study done that actually looked at three schools fully," the member said, adding that the board had, the member believed, said it did not want a school that large: "We don't want a school with 900 or 1,000 students. It's not educationally sound."
Enrollment today is lower than that projection. Figures read at an October 2 Board of Education committee meeting put enrollment at 442 at Hurlbutt and 432 at Weston Intermediate, a total of 874.
A different three-school idea
Selectwoman Lauren Traum asked whether the town had ever looked at building a new school for pre-K through grade 4 and turning the intermediate school into the middle school.
The Colliers representative said a 2019 Silver Petrucelli study and a 2022 study by the firm Tecton had both looked at many options, and that while he could not say for certain, he believed a version along those lines had been explored.
Traum also suggested turning Hurlbutt over to the town, saying materials on the town website showed that would cut the building's operating cost by "50 to 60 something percent." She said the superintendent had said she would support a three-school option.
Later in the discussion, the Colliers representative said that in reviewing the studies, "I believe the reports clearly placed the middle school as the highest priority."
Where it stands
Low has described the three-school figures as an update of an old study, not a new option. First Selectwoman Samantha Nestor told the September 24 meeting that the Board of Education had sent the boards its recommendation to build a new middle school, and the boards are working toward a townwide vote on November 2, 2027.