Schools Choose Pollard Architecture Firm, Refine Literacy Pilot

May 21, 2025
• The district offered an update on the proposed renovation to the middle school at the School Committee meeting Tuesday. School administration also announced it will drop Units of Study from its literacy pilot, which follows months of opposition from community members.

With a Pollard expansion on the horizon, school officials selected HMFH Architects to design a new building, which could accommodate grades six through eight.

“This is certainly an exciting day, and one literally decades in the making,” member Andrea Longo Carter said of the news at the School Committee’s Tuesday meeting.

Having chosen a partner, Needham Public Schools will begin its feasibility study — set to be completed by mid-October — and later enter the design and costing phase of the project, which is expected to conclude around August 2026. The project may appear at the Special Town Meeting in the fall of 2026, where it would likely require an override vote. Should the plans follow that timeline, construction would start in the spring of 2028, and a renovated Pollard would open in 2031, according to officials.

“So those families out there with kindergartners and first graders, you are the ones who should be thinking about learning about and getting involved in this project, because your children will be attending this school,” said Hank Haff, director of the town’s Building Design and Construction Department.

But the project’s price tag is a large one. Without specific plans in place, it’s estimated to cost more than $310 million, and that number could increase, Superintendent Dan Gutekanst said. “This is a moving target based on what the community decides,” he said.

A new Mitchell Elementary School — priced at around $147 million — and a $400,000 investment in High Rock to create a sixth elementary school add up to $462 million.

However, Gutekanst contends “it’s actually the lowest cost and the shortest duration, and it achieves the most square footage of all.” The new buildings would also address infrastructure needs and add class capacity, an issue that arose during the MBTA Communities Act discussion.

“We’ve identified significant deficiencies at both Pollard and at Mitchell, and some overcrowding and program deficiencies at High Rock,” Gutekanst said. “And of course, based on the recent community conversations this past fall around housing, Needham is always thinking about how we can gain more classrooms, particularly at the elementary level.”

For Pollard, the Massachusetts School Building Authority could provide $62 million in funding, Gutekanst said.

The Sunita Williams Elementary School redesign, planned during COVID, cost about $66 million. Though much less costly, that renovation houses fewer students and is just an elementary school, School Committee Alisa Skatrud said. Pollard would have, after combining sixth through eighth grade, about 1,400 students, she said.

“The math kind of works, it’s three to four times the number of students, and it’s 10 years later,” she said. “It’s not a huge surprise to get from $60 million to $300 million.”

Following Pollard, Mitchell would be next in line. During construction, Mitchell students could temporarily move to High Rock, which would later open as its own elementary school or other facility.

During each step, Haff stressed the need for community engagement.

“We want to make sure that it’s a very public process, that people’s voices are heard,” Haff said. “The aspirations and the opportunities are really open at this point, and we want to refine a plan that people will support both at Town Meeting and at the ballot box.”

Literacy Pilot

As the school year ends, school administrators gathered feedback on its four literacy programs being piloted and decided to discontinue the revised Units of Study and Benchmark Advance next school year.

Arc and Collaborative Classroom, the other two programs, will remain in the pilot, and Fishtank, another literacy curriculum, will be added through spring 2026. The district plans to implement one by next fall.

Teachers who piloted the literacy programs want to “embrace change” and try alternatives to Units of Study, which is currently used in the district, Director of Literacy Lisa Messina said. The revised curriculum did show “important shifts” in its reading program, Messina said, and its writing program proved strong.

Units of Study and Benchmark Advance ranked lower in evaluations based on diversity and quality of reading materials, and of the four, Units of Study was the least recommended by literacy specialists and school personnel.

Similar to Units of Study and FUNdations — an additional phonics program — Fishtank also has an “explicit systematic phonics program” to coincide with reading and writing, Messina said. That made the program appealing, as did its accessibility and lower cost, she added.

“We have three very different programs in front of us that will provide very different experiences for the students of Needham Public Schools,” Messina said, “although they all have wonderful qualities, and we have some very strategic things that we need to understand about these programs going into the fall.”