A brief description of the project:

• The proposed new school will replace Wildwood and Fort River Schools with one new elementary school on the Fort River site.

• The Amherst School Committee and Amherst Pelham School Committee have voted to move Amherst’s sixth-grade students to the middle school.  The new school will therefore be kindergarten through fifth grade.

• The new three-story school will have a capacity of 575 students, with five classrooms for each of the six grades.

• It will be a Net Zero building using ground source heat pumps and photovoltaic panels to supply 100% of the energy for the building.  The site will include space for outdoor learning and play.

• The project began with Amherst's acceptance into the Masachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) Core Program in December 2019.  

• In March 2023, the Town submitted the Schematic Design report to the MSBA: the project was approved at the April 26, 2023 MSBA Board meeting.  The approved project built on two earlier reports: Preliminary Design Program (3/2022) which assessed space needs given the education program, community priorities, and existing conditions, and provided preliminary comparisons of Options and the Preferred Schematic Report (6/2022) that selected a new, three-story building at the Fort River site preferred option.

• Voters approved municipal funding for the project in a debt exclusion vote on May 2, 2023.

• This website serves as a source of information for the project.