Since March 2022, a group of administrators, teachers, and students at Lexington High School have been redesigning the school to better meet student and faculty needs.
In recent years, the school has seen an unprecedented increase in enrollment, and is now struggling to support its largest student population in history.
“Our enrollment at this school is close to 2400 students now and the core spaces at the school were built for around 1800. We are the fourth or fifth largest high school in the state of Massachusetts, but we don’t have a school structure that supports that,” Andrew Baker, the principal of LHS, said.
In addition to overcrowding, LHS buildings are outdated and certain classrooms do not meet the size requirements specified by the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA). LHS students have also voiced concerns about the current school building.
“There’s a lot of issues with congestion in both students’ spacing and also in terms of circulation and getting to and from the school,” Nishanth Veeragandham, a junior on the school building committee, said.
Administrators began the process of designing a new school by applying for a grant from the MSBA. Meanwhile, students, teachers, and administrators have brought their ideas to visioning workshops to design a sustainable school building. The student committee allows students to share insights on how to improve the overall student experience in the new school buildings.
“I think the new school would ideally be more safe, and it would be easier and safer to get to. Within the school, at least right now in the design process, they are putting a lot of focus on how we interact with the space both from an educational and social perspective,” Veeragandham said.
Since the committee is still in the early stages of planning, it is unclear what the renovation project will entail. The school is currently exploring multiple options for construction.
“One of the options is to renovate the school in place; one of the options is to do what’s called an add or alternate type of construction, which is to build in a phased way where you work on one part of the building and then you construct something close by and then you connect it. The last is to knock this structure down and to build entirely new on another site,” Baker said.
Regardless of which approach is chosen, the School Building Committee is determined to create a new school building that will support Lexington for many years to come. The construction will require input from not just school community members, but also Lexington residents, who play an essential role in funding the new school building.
“Even with the large grant from the Massachusetts School Building Authority, this project will cost a lot of money to the taxpayers of Lexington, so they’re going to demand that we think hard and get it right,” Baker said.
