Building Aid Agency Arranges Sept. 22 Visit to Hadley

It's another step toward getting approval for state dollars to fund . But the reality is: any such funding is a long ways off.

Superintendent Lynne Celli announced last night that the Massachusetts School Building Authority has arranged for an outside firm to visit Hadley Elementary School on Sept. 22.

The unnamed firm, from New York, will report back to the Building Authority on Hadley's condition and needs.

The superintendent said it is way too early to infer that the town will receive state funding for a school building project but it is a step in that direction.

School district officials took the first step in January by filing a statement of interest in the grant dollars.

They filed a joint resolution, along with selectmen, expressing the interest, and listed 100-year-old Hadley Elementary School as a local school with deficiencies.

Notification about the Sept. 22, visit was the first the district had heard from the building agency since local officials declared their interest.

The agency's visit to Swampscott shows that the agency is taking seriously the district's interest in school building funding.

Also, the district was chosen for the visit out of scores of other districts that had expressed interest, the superintendent said.

The state provides partial funding for school projects that it supports.

That means that the local master plan for consolidating elementary schools is not necessarily the project for which the state would provide funding.

The school building process, in general, from the time that a statement of interest is filed to when a project starts is typically 3-5 years, the superintendent said earlier.

In 2004, the Building Authority replaced the education department’s building assistance program, which racked up $11 billion in debt and left many school districts waiting for funding for many years.

The Building Authority’s goal is to select affordable and efficient projects for funding and to pay the costs as they are incurred, thereby saving districts money on interest payments, according to the Building Authority website.