On Dec. 8, all Lexington residents who are registered to vote can weigh in on whether to move forward with the new Lexington High School building project. LexObserver has written more than 40 reported articles about the project, and published dozens of Letters to the editor from residents expressing their opinions. For those of you who are just catching up, here’s what you need to know:
What’s wrong with the old school?
The current school, built in 1953, is old and rundown. It’s also extremely overcrowded. It was built for 1,800 students and currently hosts 2,405. Students often attend classes in temporary structures that were added to campus, and some eat lunch on the hallway floors because there isn’t enough seating. The HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning) system malfunctions frequently and only about 40% of the school has air conditioning. Air quality is poor, which leads to increased sickness and absences. The building is not fully compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, meaning there aren’t adequate ramps and elevators to make the entire high school accessible to students who are physically disabled. The current school runs on outdated heating and electrical systems that are not in line with current environmental standards.
What’s the plan for the new building?
The new school design imagines mitigating all those issues. The design chosen for the high school, known as “Bloom,” calls for building a new four-story building that’s about 460,000 square feet. The new school building will be built on the current sports fields. Once it’s completed, the town will tear down the current high school building and build new sports fields in its place. The plan also includes adding to and renovating the current field house to make it about 50,000 square feet.
The new building will be all electric, including a 4,806 kW system of solar panels, a 2MW / 8MWh solar energy storage battery, 20 electric vehicle chargers, and hybrid air-source and ground-source heat pumps for HVAC. Those features will likely make the building net-zero and could even make it so the building produces more energy than it uses.
The new school will be built for an enrollment of 2,395, which is an estimate the town and a state agency came up with together based on past enrollment patterns and anticipated new housing. Some residents have questioned whether an enrollment of 2,395 is large enough considering the new housing planned across town. The design of the new school includes 20,000 square feet of central office space for district staff. That office space is designed to easily be converted into 11 to 12 additional classrooms if enrollment spikes.
The layout of the new school is another major change. The current high school has a California-like open layout. Students walk outside to get from class to class. That design allows the public to freely walk through campus while school is in session. The new school will be one building, with an outdoor courtyard on the third floor, which the public cannot access while school is in session. This is considered a safer design since there will be only one main entrance, which can be secured more easily than multiple buildings with many entrances. The distance between classes in the new building will be shorter.
To get a sense of what the proposed building looks like, you can watch a video rendering here.
What about the field house?
The new school will be attached to the field house, which will be added to and renovated. The new field house will be connected to the HVAC and plumbing systems in the new building, so it will be able to host bathrooms, heating, and air conditioning. It will host a new three-lane, 146-meter track, which is one lane smaller than the track inside the current field house. Some residents aren’t fond of building another 146-meter track because that size track is too small for the school to host meets. But the athletics staff and design team voted in favor of the new track.
Concern about the wetlands
Some residents worry about the location of the new high school and how it will affect the environment. Some of the land the new school will be built on is wetlands. The architecture team on the project has worked with the town’s Conservation Commission, on which there is a professional wetlands scientist, to devise a plan to replicate the lost wetlands due to construction elsewhere on the property. Replicating those wetlands will mitigate increased flooding due to construction and help preserve the wildlife on site.
So what will this all cost?
The entire project is projected to cost about $660 million. That price tag includes about $124.3 million in contingency costs, which is money set aside at the beginning of a project to cover unforeseen costs. The Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) agreed to give the town $118.8 million to help fund the project. It could give the town another $2.9 million if the town spends its money in areas the MSBA wants. The town also anticipates getting about $4.5 million from the state’s MassSave program, an incentive program for municipalities to use green technology when building new capital projects. The overall cost to residents is estimated to be about $532.9 million.
Residents can see how much their property taxes will increase year-to-year, over the next 30 years, by plugging the assessed property value of their house into an online calculator tool the town made.
LexObserver found cost is residents’ biggest concern with the plan for the new high school. Neighboring towns paid less to build their new schools. Lexington’s high school building project team attributes its comparatively higher cost to inflation and tariffs. Other comparable projects in neighboring towns are either already completed, or are further along in their process, so they are less impacted by those factors. At the end of the summer the team estimated Lexington will pay an extra $8 million for construction materials due to tariffs.
LexObserver did a detailed comparison to Revere’s high school building project, which is also going to be built for an enrollment of about 2,400 but totals about $493 million. That delta is mostly due to differences in timeline, scope, and sustainability features between the two projects.
What’s the debt exclusion, and when do we vote?
Lexington residents will pay for the new high school through raised property taxes if the Dec. 8 vote, known as the debt exclusion vote, passes.
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.
A “yes” vote on Dec. 8 is a vote in favor of raising property taxes for 30 years, beginning in fiscal year 2028, to pay for the new high school. A “no” vote sends the district back to the drawing board after a years long process to arrive at this point.
Here’s the information about where and when you can vote.
What’s the current status of the project?
Town Meeting recently voted on the project, and about 92 percent of Town Meeting members voted in favor of it. On the Select Board, all voted in favor except for one.
Next, the entire Town will have the opportunity to vote. Just like in routine local elections and presidential elections, the polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Dec. 8 for the debt exclusion vote.
If the debt exclusion vote in December passes, the project team will begin construction on the new school in 2027. The new school is scheduled to open for the 2029-2030 school year. The team will then tear down the current school building and build new sports fields in its place. The entire project is estimated to be finished in 2031.
I will vote NO on December 8 because, sized for only today’s LHS enrollment (2,395 students), Bloom is evidently too small given the many new MBTA dwellings that will be built in the next 10 years — I predict 5,750 new ones per https://lexobserver.org/2025/10/17/how-lexington-highs-future-enrollment-was-predicted/#comment-59468, a huge increase in Lexington’s population.
Bloom, at a cost of $1,293 per square foot, is also after escalation and scope corrections for energy systems 25% more expensive than the new Belmont High School and 14% more expensive than Arlington’s per the SBC’s own calculations (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1u2umuhbcHG43JgRG0Y19BM1lPVDyW2en/view?usp=sharing), and 30% more expensive than Watertown’s per my calculations (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PcH2CCi7DjPlKq10Q0ZhS41RU4VY6D9O/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=116971253884586510151&rtpof=true&sd=true). Bloom, at $660 million for just 2,395 students is simply too expensive.
Finally, a better on-campus, phased, box-based design was never looked at by the SBC, nor cost-estimated. Phase 1 of this design can be funded by the MSBA, and possibly Phase 2 as well. This design would be far more flexible, likely cheaper than Bloom’s very high $1,293/sq ft (because of the simpler boxes) and able to accommodate well over 3,000 students, possibly with a separate Freshman House if enrollments balloon over 3,200.
For all these reasons, as I explain in more detail in my Boston Globe op-ed at https://drive.google.com/file/d/136cJxAYPztsy-5V5D2RrGC-la1g6tptd/view?usp=sharing, a NO vote on Monday December 8 will force the SBC to pivot from an overly luxurious Bloom that breaks the continuity of the center fields and may face unsurmountable environmental issues and therefore delays, to the quicker-to-build in its first phase on-campus design that makes better sense for our Town.
Congrats and thanks to reporter Maggie Scales for an excellent summary of the LHS project’s background, features, and status!
I appreciate the local reporting we get from the Observer – thank you. But in writing these pieces, please be careful to not report the assertions of one side of the debate as fact. For example, regarding the wetlands, the article states “The architecture team on the project has worked with the town’s Conservation Commission, on which there is a professional wetlands scientist, to devise a plan to replicate the lost wetlands due to construction elsewhere on the property. Replicating those wetlands will mitigate increased flooding due to construction and help preserve the wildlife on site.”
As written, the above suggests the wetlands issue has been satisfactorily dealt with and is not a problem. But others disagree, arguing that as the site is protected by MGL 130 § 40 and regulated by 310 CMR 10.55, an alternatives analysis is required to be submitted to the Lexington Conservation Commission, subject to the same requirements of feasibility. They claim this requirement will compel the Conservation Commission to find the architect’s proposal unacceptable. In addition the architects cannot meet the requirement set out in the EEA’s certification to protect the wetland identified in the commission’s ORAD as W7.
So you can see the wetlands issue is not settled. It and other environmental concerns (e.g., floodplain) will persist beyond the December 8 DE override vote.
If I recall correctly, there is a patch of man mad wetlands that was created to mitigate the existing old school’s wetlands footprint when it was built / expanded. The new school will indeed be built on that man made wetlands mitigation zone and that zone will be moved (similar to how it was when it was originally implemented) to satisfy conservation compliance. TLDR: they will move one man made wetlands conservation zone to another.
Thank you for this article and information! Unfortunately, I had commented earlier on this post but I think I must have made an error as it has not been posted. That being said, I will again make an attempt to share with the readers some of my thoughts on a new LHS.
As a lifelong Lexingtonian and a graduate of LHS I strongly support the idea of needing a new HS. However, as we get closer to voting I continue to hold reservations on moving forward with the Bloom design.
LHS is the heart of our community. I’ve had many conversations with LHS alumni and the majority of us comment on how lucky we were to have an open campus. Moving up to LHS was big school experience milestone. We were young and the LHS campus gave us a taste of freedom. A tad bit of adulting that was liberating.
Yes, as moody hormonal teens we may have complained about having to walk outside to class when it was cold or raining, however, the freedom it gave us made up for the occasional weather blips. In fact this type of campus provided us with life skill learning experiences that at our age could not have been obtained otherwise.
We had a micro sort of freedom that prepared us for life after HS whether it be college or a career. The open campus design may have had a few flaws but going outside to get to classes is a legendary part of the LHS culture and experience.
The Bloom design, although is beautiful it does not encompass the overall true nature of what an LHS education is about.
I realize the current school is inadequate in providing sophisticated classrooms, cafeterias, lockers, gyms, bathrooms, hallways, offices etc.. But does this mean the only way to remedy these problems is with Bloom?
It looks like Bloom’s hefty price tag is going to heavily burden the taxpayers and the financial health of our community, and I’m not convinced that it needs to be this way. For example, does a well run state of the art LHS need to have school administration offices on location? Does it need a 3rd floor courtyard? These are expensive extras.
When we were kids our courtyard consisted of mostly natural open spaces between and around buildings which included nicely groomed grassy areas where we would hang out. There we could see fellow students walk to and from the center or drive by blaring music in their cars. Our little community had all this open space and we didn’t need an elevator to get there.
We most certainly need an updated and regulatory compliant school, however, Bloom is not the only way to do it. I think we as a community can do a better less costly design that will satisfy the learning and safety needs of our children as well as maintaining the unique campus experience that LHS has been providing its pupils for many generations.
I am by no means an expert on this kind of situation. My comments are my current thoughts. Lexington is a caring community. We are fortunate. I think we all want what’s best we just have different ideas on how to get there:)
Peace!
The unresolved environmental issues that the site on which Bloom would be built are explained — really reiterated: those issues have been raised months ago, and have not yet been addressed — by Lexington resident and retired long-time LHS math teacher Jim Williams in his November 16, 2025 letter to the State Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs and to our Select Board at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1e449lFnDS0zMmbPL_8iOMOypLzzKjJ9M/view?usp=sharing.
Patrick, thank you for providing Jim’s letter. This is very important information that members of our community should consider prior to voting.
The security culture that seems to dominate conventional thinking around architecture, and schools in particular, is really sad. Rather than feeling safer, it’s a constant reminder that we ought to be afraid. Sacrificing our freedom, even the seemingly trivial but daily freedom of walking outside, is a capitulation to terror. There is a social and psychological price that may not be obvious, but builds over time. Surely we know, putting our kids in a fortress is not the answer.
The Observer’s summary greatly oversimplifies what is possibly the biggest challenge that our town has ever faced financially.
It seems to have been lost in the rhetoric that Bloom, as designed, will actually cost the taxpayers of Lexington over $800,000,000. This is the building cost plus the interest for the Municipal bonds. And there will also be an additional CPA tax of 3% on the new taxes.
This is a huge price tag and it has far-reaching impacts for our community.
The MSBA has a multi-factor formula for reimbursement. Lexington qualifies for a maximum of 31% of project costs that are deemed “fiscally responsible and educationally appropriate” .
The Bloom plan qualifies for 17%. This low percentage indicates that a substantial portion of the design is deemed “extra” and goes beyond essential needs. These luxuries include:
• $30 million (including interest) for the school administration offices.
• $50 million for the new field house.
• $85 million net positive energy system (there is calculated a positive payback over 30 years)
While I am personally nostalgic for the tradition of the field house, these are simply “wants” versus “needs” in a budget of this magnitude.
As the details of the upcoming fiscal year budget were confirmed recently during the November 20th public financial summit meeting, Lexington is already working harder each year to balance its budget.
As responsible stewards of public funds, we must ask if these Bloom luxury items should be prioritized over other town priorities such as core educational needs, affordable housing, open space, the environment, future capital projects, etc.
My family has deep roots in Lexington—my parents, my husband and I, and our three children all graduated from LHS. We understand the Lexington legacy; our students have consistently performed at or near the top in the state, even with the current building’s deficits. Impressive. This demonstrates that educational success is driven by people and programs.
I have never voted against an override, but I will be voting against the current Bloom project. I don’t think it is the right project for Lexington. Bloom would be an extravagant solution and commitment for Lexington and for each one of us. I think everyone in town cares about our schools and recognizes the need for a new or improved high school. We can find another more balanced solution.
Some napkin math – if construction costs rise 5% year-over-year, then a delay of 2 years (Let’s say the debt exclusion fails, new architect needs to be hired, etc.) you’re at $717M for the same exact project *without MSBA support of $121M*. Bloom is then $717M in 2 years versus $530M now. A $500M school in today’s dollars is $560M in 2 years. That’s the reality. We’re getting phenomenal return on our investment here with 18% state support. There’s no credible alternative offered. None. It’s some mythical cheaper project in the future. The only certainty is that in the interim we have a failing and overcrowded current LHS and that costs will continue to rise.
Jeremy, I appreciate the math, however, your numbers/reasonings are based on the current Bloom project. How about an overall less costly project by eliminating these extras i.e, the administration offices, the courtyard, and dressing up the field house. Why are we building on naked wetlands which I assume presents with additional challenges and costs. These are add ons. If we’re spending $800m opposed to $400M do we really care about the $121M MSBA support? Often projects of this sort go over budget. Clearly other factors have not been addressed. The focus has primarily been on the Bloom project. There are always less expensive options and different ways of doing things. This is a HS we’re building not Disney Land.
Thank you Maggie and Laura for your coverage of the LHS renewal project. There are ongoing spirited discussions about the project on several social media platforms. Based on my posts urging residents to vote NO, an extremely well organized set of questions was addressed to me on the Lexington list yesterday, to which I responded in detail. Please read the entire post at https://lex.groups.io/g/lex/message/125516. I believe that it addresses most questions voters may have about Bloom, and helps them decide how to vote on Dec. 8th.
As I stated, based on hundreds of hours I spent since March 2024 sitting through uncounted SBC meetings and researching many aspects of the project – SBC process, project design, cost and MSBA rules and regs – I am firmly convinced that a NO vote on Dec. 8th is the best vote for Lexington. This debt exclusion is not just about our children, IT IS ABOUT OUR ENTIRE COMMUNITY. Please join me in voting NO on Dec 8th.
Olga, thank you for sharing this information.
We completely blown past some important demographic issues. The long term birth rates are declining. enrollments will be declining. I don’t know where this “overcrowding” issue is being concocted. The hidden agenda appears to make Lexington a magnet from other places. The idea of “we need this” falls apart on test scores declining, they are not. No one is asking why 80% of the municipal budget benefits 20% of the residents. No one is talking about the predatory tax consequences for senior citizens who derive no benefit from the project. What really needs to be addressed is the regressive tax structure of Massachusetts and another revenue stream other than the property tax to hold seniors harmless from the project.
In Lexington it is really easy to decide whether to vote Yes or No on a proposal. If others are spending money and campaigning to convince you to vote to spend other people’s money, then you must vote NO, perhaps HELL NO! If however, a Yes vote meant that only those who campaign for a yes pay for it completely, then maybe, I’d consider supporting them. 2/3 to 3/4 of a billion dollars for a high school is beyond outrageous.
This report says the design will be “Net Zero” which sounds great, but that term only applies to the operational emissions. What is the carbon footprint of the building materials and construction itself? How many years will it have to operate before it actually starts benefiting the climate? Leaders around the world, including here in Massachusetts, have set climate goals for 2050. If the Bloom plan locks in emissions equivalent to doing nothing for the next 25+ years, we may have a great school, but a broken climate. If only our parents’ generation had addressed climate change when they first knew about it back in the 1980s, we wouldn’t be facing such difficult choices today. What will our kids say about us?