With an estimated price tag surpassing $600M, Lexington’s new high school could be the most expensive in the country

Lexington’s new high school could be the most expensive public school in the country based on Oct. 15 price estimates predicting the project will cost between $595 million and $764 million. The town is on track to beat out the $578 million Robert F. Kennedy Community Schools in Los Angeles, CA, which was last reported to be the costliest public school in the nation, the Associated Press reported. 

Dore + Whittier, the Owner’s Project Manager, estimated that nearly $150 million of Lexington’s price tag will be covered by state funding and federal rebates, leaving an estimated $461 million to be covered by taxpayers and town savings.

Neighboring towns such as Arlington and Belmont paid under $300 million for their recently constructed high schools, so why is Lexington’s project so much more expensive? 

Joe Pato, Lexington Select Board member and School Building Committee member, told LexObserver that “there is no budget.” Rather, the SBC has been conducting outreach to learn what school staff, residents, and the town want in a new school, in addition to discovering the potential costs of bringing the current school or newly-constructed building up to code, and developing price estimates accordingly.

The town has gone this route because it is working with the Massachusetts School Building Authority to plan and fund the project. As a result, the town must follow its guidelines. That includes having a SBC, a group of 15 residents, town and school staff, and designer and project manager representatives that collaborates with project managers and votes on project advancement, and developing cost estimates as they have. 

Asked if that practice is orthodox, Joel Gagne, CEO of Allerton Hill Communications, a communications consulting firm that works with school districts across the country, told LexObserver, “in high wealth communities, generally yes.”

Pato told LexObserver that the town followed those same MSBA guidelines when envisioning Estabrook Elementary School, which began its construction in 2013, and Hastings Elementary School ahead of its 2018 construction. Both of those projects were also done in collaboration with the authority. 

“This is also the standard process for other municipal projects,” Pato said. 

In exchange for adhering to the MSBA’s guidelines, Dore + Whittier estimated the authority will grant the town about $100 million to help fund the project, according to the OPM’s August presentation. 

In that presentation, the OPM estimated that the town will receive about $39 million in MassSave rebates, which will cover the cost of the school’s ground source heat pumps, solar panels, and related expenses. And, Lexington will have saved about $40 million in its Capital Stabilization Fund which will help chip away at the estimated bill. 

During the SBC’s Oct. 15 meeting, members decided they prefer two of the six massing studies, Bloom and Weave, both of which would be about 441,000 square feet. Bloom envisions constructing a new building on the property’s sports fields and Weave calls for reconstructing the current school in phases so it can remain in its existing footprint.

The construction of Bloom, alone, would cost about $598 million. It would cost about $621 million to construct the school with central offices inside, which would boost its square footage to about 460,000. Constructing the building with central offices inside and renovating the property’s field house — the SBC’s preferred way to update the current field house — would cost about $648 million.

The construction of Weave, alone, would cost about $670 million. It would cost about $694 million to construct the school with central offices inside, likewise boosting square footage. And, it would cost about $720 million to construct the school building with central offices, and renovate the field house.

In comparison, Arlington’s high school building project, on which construction began in 2020, cost about $291 million. Similarly, Belmont’s high school building project, on which construction began in 2019, cost about $295 million. 

Mike Burton, partner at Dore + Whittier, said it’s important to consider “when the projects were bid” — that is, when formal proposals are submitted to complete a project — during the OPM’s August presentation. When adjusted for inflation, the cost of Belmont and Arlington’s projects increased by a few hundred million dollars. 

“This gets all five high schools on the same page in terms of time,” Burton said during that presentation. “It’s apples to apples.”

Burton said enrollment and the size of the school are also important to consider when looking at price. While Lexington’s enrollment is hundreds more than those of Arlington or Belmont, the size of Lexington’s building likely won’t be much different from its neighbors. 

The scope of what the projects will include is also consequential when comparing costs, Burton said. Installing hundreds of wells for geothermal heat pumps is one item included in the scope of Lexington’s project that is not included in Arlington or Belmont’s. When adjusted for inflation, if Arlington or Belmont included geothermal heat pumps in their projects, they would be more costly. And, if their schools were the same square footage as Lexington’s imagined building, the price tags of their projects would likewise adjust. 

Pato told LexObserver that the estimated costs include many contingencies because the town is still in early stages of imagining the project. As the process continues, the estimated cost of the building project will become more refined. 

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.