Wellington School: steam and sinkholes and exhaust! Oh my!

We’ve all been reading about the upcoming debt exclusion to fund reconstruction of the Wellington Elementary School and other “expensive items,” as the Belmont Citizen Herald referred to them. What’s harder to grasp from a news story is why a total overhaul at Wellington is necessary. Wellington, after all, was one of just 49 schools state wide to be selected by the Massachusetts School Building Authority for a Feasibility Study, so obviously the State thinks things are pretty dire. But parents (myself included) who don’t have children at the school may not sense the urgency of the situation there. God knows I didn’t, which is why I was glad I took a tour with Wellington parent Karen Parmett and Wellington’s facilities director just before the Tuesday School Committee Meeting.

Whether its outdated heating and electrical systems that run operating costs up 50% per child, half century old heating systems that make some students swelter while others bundle up, windowless classrooms in the basement or sinkholes in the parking lot…this school needs a radical makeover. To help the BB community see for themselves, I took along my handy Canon Powershot and made some videos from the tour. Over the next couple days, I’m going to be uploading them and letting you, the BloggingBelmont audience, check out the Wellington tour — raw and unedited — and decide for yourself.