When I hear people saying that we should save money by repairing Lexington High School (LHS) instead of rebuilding, I think of an email our family’s auto mechanic once sent us about our beloved 16-year-old Honda Civic.
The email read, “I hope you’re not planning on driving this very far,” and included a photo of the not quite rusted-out undercarriage, which was on the verge of collapse. We could have spent money repairing the brakes and bought new tires. Sooner or later, though, the engine was going to fall out.
Repairing LHS’s HVAC system will trigger code upgrades that will cost at least $300 million, and it won’t fix the central problem: LHS is shockingly overcrowded. The school was 33% over capacity last school year, with 2,405 students crammed in a school designed for 1,800. And LHS been continuously over capacity since 2005—two decades of stopgap measures, modulars and inaction.
Renovations won’t make the hallways larger so students can move between classes, or provide enough seats in the cafeteria so kids don’t have to eat while sitting on the floor, or gyms or lab spaces that are large enough for all the students who use them.
My family chose to give up that Honda Civic because I drove my kids in that car. I wanted to keep them safe. All of Lexington’s high school students deserve a safe, functioning high school.
I urge my fellow residents to vote YES on the December 8 Lexington High School building debt exclusion vote.
Meg:
If you read carefully #1 and #4 on https://lexobserver.org/2025/08/18/letters-to-the-editor-some-facts-about-bloom, you will realize that your “Repairing LHS’s HVAC system will trigger code upgrades that will cost at least $300 million” is pure invention, unsupported by fact.
We maintain ALL our school and municipal buildings for less than $8.2 million per year (the FY26 projected amount), so running the “1998 Honda Civic” that LHS indeed is costs less than that annually (I asked the Town Manager and the Schools Superintendent for the exact amount, without an answer yet).
We need a new High School asap, but Bloom, if ever built, is a disaster for Lexington for these 3 reasons:
(1) Bloom is too small (sized for 2,395 students, fewer than we now have): just today, a new MBTA development for 52-58 condos at 16 Clarke St appeared on https://www.lexingtonma.gov/1496/MBTA-Communities-Zoning; I predict over 4,100 such new MBTA dwellings, mostly apartments, in the next 8-10 years (1,150 in 11 already known projects plus those on https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17OpIfyFsvGyrz8u_fQ5nhWYk7rnEDml4/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=116971253884586510151&rtpof=true&sd=true), which will increase Lexington’s population by 30%, so building Bloom for $660 million for today’s enrollment is unreasonable,
(2) Bloom is too expensive, and
(3) the SBC has been lying to the public to make Bloom look as the only option when the SBC never studied a true 2-phase design, which can alleviate LHS’s overcrowding sooner than Bloom and will accommodate many more students once its 2nd phase is completed, all of this at less cost than Bloom.
And I don’t see how an article 97 swap can be granted for Bloom, since the SBC never studied an alternative it was told on April 29, 2024 exists, C6.