Westford Building Committee Sets Criteria to Narrow 18 School Options to Eight

Other Committee · Meeting of June 23, 2026

Westford's Robinson School Building Committee moved toward narrowing 18 school site and building options to roughly eight, using a newly defined 14-criterion scoring matrix. At the June 23 meeting, project architect Lee walked the committee through how two example Robinson schemes, an addition-renovation and a new 470-student replacement, performed against criteria including educational adequacy, traffic safety, sustainability, and community use, with the renovation scheme drawing minus ratings on operating costs and long-range master planning because it would not free up Abbott School for town use. A community survey of more than 100 residents ranked "supports educational needs" first by a wide margin.

Members debated whether district-wide equity, specifically the size and quality disparity between a potential large new school and the town's remaining 300-to-400-student elementary buildings, warranted its own criterion; the committee agreed to bring it back in a future scoring round. Individual member feedback on the matrix is due to project manager Valerie by July 1, with a compiled matrix and preliminary cost ranges to be distributed by July 10 ahead of a July 14 vote to select options to advance into the Preliminary Design Program, targeting an August 5 submission to the Massachusetts School Building Authority.

In the full story:

• Schedule and Process Update
• Review and Discussion of the 14 Evaluation Criteria
• Lee walked through all 14 criteria and their working definitions
• Equity as a Criteria Question
• Walk-Through of Two Robinson Schemes
• Next Steps and Schedule
• The complete report — 2,342 words

Source: the Other Committee meeting of June 23, 2026, reported from the official video recording and transcript.