Chinese residents voice concerns about high school building project in informal survey posted on WeChat

Last week, Avia Liao, a sophomore at LHS and member of the high school’s Student School Building Committee, sent a Google Form to local WeChat groups asking for residents’ thoughts on the town’s school building project.

WeChat is a Chinese instant messaging app that Liao said is a main form of communication among Chinese residents. The form, which Liao sent in various WeChat groups for parents of Lexington Public School students, asks, “what is your attitude toward a new high school?” and “how satisfied are you with the chosen design for the high school?” among other questions.

Liao has received 165 responses, only about half of which are in support of the School Building Committee’s plans for the Lexington High School building project.

Many respondents said they feel the high school building project — which is estimated to cost about $662 million according to Oct. 15 cost estimates — is too expensive and the town has not done an adequate job communicating project developments with residents. 

“We need a Honda Accord, not a Tesla,” one survey respondent noted.  

“I have the feeling that if this can be more transparent and they communicate better, more people would probably have some of their concerns relieved,” Meng Yang, a member of Chinese Americans of Lexington, or CALex, told LexObserver. Yang’s group helped distribute Liao’s survey.   

Only 52 percent of respondents support or strongly support the SBC’s plans for the new LHS, with 25 percent opposed or strongly opposed, and the remainder neutral. About 23 percent support or strongly support the construction of Bloom, the concept the SBC decided to move forward with during its Nov. 12 meeting. 

Liao’s findings are a stark contrast to results of a survey introduced to residents during the SBC’s Oct. 30 community meeting, which found that 81 percent of the 348 respondents preferred Bloom over other concepts.

Many residents who completed Liao’s survey feel the project is too expensive and there has not been enough communication from the town about why that is. Echoing the results of Liao’s survey, Yang said Chinese residents have complained about a lack of clarity from the SBC regarding cost. 

“I keep hearing, ‘Why is the cost so high? Can you explain more? Justify it.’” she said. “I don’t feel like it’s widely communicated.”

Members of the Chinese American Association of Lexington, or CAAL, are similarly concerned about the cost of the project, Yan-Ling Zhang, a member of CAAL, said. People she has spoken to feel unclear on how much money will go toward the basic structure of the school compared to extra interior features, and whether or not the town is using taxpayers’ money sensibly, she said. 

“School is not necessarily about how many buildings, how luxurious your buildings are, it is also depending on what teachers you attract,” she said. “If we get very good teachers, we don’t necessarily have to get the most fancy building.”

Despite concerns about cost, Zhang senses the members who regularly attend CAAL meetings are generally in support of the SBC’s plans for the new high school.

The SBC has convened for over 100 public meetings, workshops, community forums, and more — some of which are over two hours long — since the committee’s inception. All of those meetings are recorded for residents to view through the committee’s minutes, but Yang and Zhang said it’s difficult for parents who work full time to attend meetings or watch their recordings. 

Zhang argues both the town and residents should communicate better.

“One way [the town] can do a better job is to make the information available,” she said. “On the other hand, the residents have to actively care about these things — you cannot just ask people to feed you the information.”

On Sept. 15, CALex organized a virtual meeting with Joe Pato, a member of the SBC, so members could ask him questions about the project and voice their concerns. Yang said many members asked about environmental aspects and cost of designs the SBC was considering at the time, among other topics. Overall, Yang said the meeting was well received among members. 

Similarly, CAAL connected with Hsing Min Sha and Kseniya Slavsky, who are both members of the SBC, so CAAL members could ask questions about the project.

CAAL members are “feeling positively about the project,” Zhang said, and are “very grateful” for the SBC members.”

Asked if the SBC will conduct more outreach to the Chinese community, Pato, who is also a member of the Select Board, said it is an ongoing process. 

“This is a process that we are working through and there will be continued outreach to the public over the next year before we get to the point of going to a debt exclusion vote,” he said. “We will be working on organizing opportunities at different times of day to be able to reach a broad constituency.”

Nevertheless, better understanding the cost of the project through improved communication likely won’t win over all opponents. 

“I did hear some parents saying that because their kids are already in college, they’re probably going to move out of the town because of the property tax increase,” Yang said.

While not all of the residents who responded to Liao’s survey support constructing Bloom, most respondents agree that LHS students deserve a better place to go to school than the building they’re in now. 

“I feel like generally, even with all this criticism, people still want a new school and a better learning environment for their kids. It’s just that there’s a lot of stuff going on with the project that they don’t really understand. 
And if it’s going to have such a big impact on the community with the property tax raises and stuff, they want to know exactly what’s going on,” Liao said.