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Amherst Elementary School Building Project

Mission: To build an excellent elementary school that supports child-centered education, meets diverse educational needs of our children in daylight-filled classrooms, uses the outdoors for education and play, and does so in a cost-effective “green” building that incorporates “net zero” energy principles.

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Our Project Advances...

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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.

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