Will Lexington residents support the debt exclusion for the new high school?

A town-wide vote where residents will decide whether or not to pass a debt exclusion to help pay for Lexington’s high school building project is penciled into the town’s calendar for December 2025. That debt exclusion is predicted to cover about $461 million of the over $600 million project, adding an expected average of around $2,000 to residents’ property tax each year for 30 years, according to an August presentation by Dore + Whittier, the Owner’s Project Manager. 

A debt exclusion allows communities to temporarily increase their tax levy — with residents’ approval through a vote — to pay for capital investments, such as a new school. The tax levy refers to the money raised through real and personal property taxes each year. The debt exclusion is an exemption to Proposition 2 ½, a state law enacted in 1980 that limits how much a municipality can raise its tax levy through real and property taxes.

Lexington also submitted its need for a new high school to the Massachusetts School Building Authority, and after three years, the MSBA agreed to work with the town to cover some of the project’s costs. 

Holding that debt exclusion vote, however, is contingent on the town making a handful of decisions in a timely manner. 

First, the School Building Committee will decide on one of the six building concepts it’s considering on Nov. 12, 2024. 

Then, in about a year, the MSBA will decide exactly how much funding it will contribute to the project, Joe Pato, Lexington select board and SBC member, told LexObserver. Upon finalizing that grant, the MSBA will essentially tell Lexington, “you need to get your funding in place in the next few months,” Pato said. 

In November 2025, Town Meeting will vote on the cost of the plan. If that vote passes with at least two-thirds support, residents will have the opportunity to weigh in on whether or not to do the project by casting ballots at the debt exclusion vote the following month. 

What happens if the debt exclusion vote does not pass? 

If it doesn’t pass, the SBC will have a few months to “make minor adjustments,” Pato said, and go back to the public for a second vote. 

Lexington faced that issue in 1997 when residents voted against a debt exclusion to fund renovations to LHS, Harrington Elementary School and Fisk Elementary School. Pato, who was not a select board member then but lived in town, said designers consequently reduced the scope of those renovations and the secondary vote passed. “But, it left all sorts of problems at the high school which we’re living with,” he told LexObserver. 

If the second vote doesn’t pass this time around, Pato said the town will have to start at square-one with the project and re-apply to work with the MSBA. The authority would then compare Lexington’s application to the many others it regularly receives, and work in order of priority. That could take many years, Pato told LexObserver, and securing the MSBA’s partnership isn’t guaranteed. 

“If we can’t demonstrate that the town is willing to move forward, they [won’t] want to waste their money and time, because there are other communities that have need,” Pato said. 

Many residents trust voting “yes” on the debt exclusion for one of the considered concepts — specifically the designs that call for a new build on the fields — is a no-brainer. 

Jess Holt-Carr, Lexington resident, told LexObserver “the time is now” to build a new high school in town. She supports the looming debt exclusion because, she said, voting “yes” is the fastest way to get the larger and updated school students need.  

“There’s no argument to be made for renovating the school in place from a timeliness perspective, from a cost perspective, and just from an overall quality of education perspective,” she said. “As far as I’m concerned, this should have been done a decade ago.”

Macy Howarth, Lexington resident, believes the value of residents’ homes is intrinsically linked to its “superior school system,” so not wanting to invest in that “is a stupid argument,” she told LexObserver. 

“Any amount of tax increase that we’re going to have to pay for this school, we are going to realize that appreciation in the value of our homes,” Howarth said.

Residents Michelle Werner and her husband, William Lester, share Howarth’s view that investing in LHS will increase property values. They also support the town’s new-build-on-the-fields plans because those designs will best address the school’s needed upgrades, specifically regarding accessibility, they said. 

Werner and Lester’s son, Caffrey, is a freshman at LHS and has Duchenne muscular dystrophy, which leads to muscle degeneration, making it difficult for him to get around. He can no longer climb stairs and he’ll soon be wheelchair-bound, which keeps him from utilizing much of LHS. While Caffrey will graduate before the new school is completed, Werner and Lester plan to support constructing a new building that’s as “equal opportunity” as the town it serves, they said. 

“If we want Lexington to be an inclusive environment that is very friendly for the disabled, which the community is, we need to create an educational system that allows that culture to continue to be fostered,” Werner said. “Or else, families won’t choose to live in Lexington who will be affected by these types of conditions.”

While many families support the concepts the SBC is considering, at least 240 residents don’t — that’s how many signatures Olga Guttag, Lexington resident, former School Committee member and founding member of LHS4All, and her group, collected in four days to create their petition.  

LHS4All is a group of residents who disapprove of the designs the SBC is exploring.

Guttag told LexObserver her group thinks the plans the SBC is exploring are unnecessarily expensive and aren’t environmentally-conscious to build. 

“I believe that what the architects have designed is a beautiful space that Lexington and others will be able to ‘ohh’ and ‘ahh’ over, but at the cost of changing the feel of the town,” she said. 

Guttag is also worried that the SBC’s concepts don’t adequately consider the potential influx in students that the MBTA Communities Act could cause.

But ​​Julie Hackett, LHS’s superintendent, said the SBC is tackling that issue during its Oct. 15 meeting. She said the SBC reached out to the MSBA and requested they reconsider LHS’s projected enrollment — a number that guides the size of the new building — because, they, too, anticipate the MBTA’s new zoning requirements will affect future enrollment. 

“I’m hoping we can think more carefully about this particular problem,” Hackett said regarding the act’s possible effects on enrollment during that meeting. 

Joel Gagne, CEO of Allerton Hill Communications, a communications consulting firm that works with school districts across the country, told LexObserver that if there is organized opposition to a capital project for a school district, it is more likely to fail. 

“When organized opposition comes about that usually shaves 5 percent off the ‘yes’ vote pretty quickly,” he said. “To dismiss that as a whole is a mistake.”

LHS4All supporters do, however, believe the town needs a new school. So they imagined their own based on SMMA’s 2015 master plan for Lexington’s public buildings. 

“What we’re [not opposed to] is getting a high school of the right size and getting it priced in such a way that is more palatable for people,” Guttag said. 

In the first phase of the group’s concept, the school’s current world language building would be demolished, and in its place, a larger four-story building with a cafeteria and modern learning spaces would be constructed. That would address what Guttag said is the “immediate problem[s] of overcrowding” and outdated classrooms. The next phase would take place two to four years later — when she anticipates the town will see the effects of the MBTA law on enrollment. 

LHS4All’s idea is not under official consideration by the SBC. 

The next SBC meeting will be on Oct. 28 from 12 pm to 1 pm. The schedule of the SBC’s upcoming meetings is displayed on the project’s website. Recordings of past meetings can be found on LexMedia’s website.