BOSTON, MA – On behalf of State Treasurer Tim Cahill, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Massachusetts School Building Authority (“MSBA”), and Katherine Craven, Executive Director of the MSBA, members of the MSBA staff were on-hand at the groundbreaking for the addition and renovation project at the East Somerville Community School, a kindergarten through eighth grade facility badly damaged by fire on December 9, 2007.
The East Somerville Community School will serve 500 students once the addition and renovation project is finished. The MSBA will be funding 80% of eligible costs to renovate more than 90,000 square feet of the 118,500-square foot building and to build two additions to the school. The total budget for the project is $34,782,578 with $10 million to be covered by insurance proceeds. The MSBA will contribute up to $15.2 million towards the project.
“I am very pleased that through hard work and collaboration we were able to find the most educationally appropriate and fiscally sound way to get students back into the East Somerville Community School. This school was a valuable community resource, and it will be again,” stated Treasurer Cahill.
“Restoring this building is not just important for the children of Somerville, but for the entire neighborhood,” stated Katherine Craven. “The MSBA is pleased to be a partner in this project.”
The MSBA strives to find the right-sized, most fiscally responsible and educationally appropriate solutions to create safe and sound learning environments. The MSBA is committed to protecting the taxpayer’s dollar by improving the school building grant process and avoiding the mistakes of the past in the funding and construction of school facilities.
The MSBA has reformed the Commonwealth’s formerly rampant and unsustainable program, which had accumulated $11 billion in debt. In 2007, as a result of programmatic reforms and sound fiscal management, the MSBA was able to reopen a sustainable, reformed grant program. In its six year history, the MSBA has made $7.3 billion in reimbursements to cities, towns and regional school districts for school construction projects. These timely payments have saved municipalities over $2.9 billion in avoided local interest costs and have provided much needed cash flow to communities in these difficult economic times.