Thursday, October 12, 2000 Older Editions

Building boom begins: End to K-8 overcrowding cheered

By Rebecca Piro

Commuters may need a little extra patience and traveling time when passing through the Cross Street and High Plain Road area as construction of two new schools is now underway.

But West Andover residents will find the new schools a "much more convenient" location for their children once the buildings are completed in 2002, said Superintendent Claudia Bach.

A crowd of West Andover families and townspeople gathered under gray skies Friday afternoon to cheer a ground-breaking ceremony at the site where these new schools will soon stand.

The schools will be built because residents approved about $34 million at 2000 Town Meeting to construct two new schools to ease overcrowding for students attending kindergarten through eighth grade.

"(The new schools' capacity) will be able to meet the needs of the future," Selectmen Chairman Brian Major said.

"Today we can truly look forward to the end of overcrowding in all our elementary and middle schools," agreed School Committee Chairwoman Tina Girdwood.

Nine children sporting yellow construction hats picked up shovels one by one and thrust them into the ground, including Eric Iworsley, a future eight-grade student in the year 2002, and Alexis Menneto, a future 2002 kindergarten student.

"She's not in school yet," said Bach, smiling, as the youngest future scholar grasped her shovel.

Tiffany Wang, winner of a student drawing contest that gave her rights to the first shovelful, will have graduated and gone on to high school before the new schools are completed.

"I kind of would like to be in these schools, because they'll be all new," she said.

Parent Casey Leber said she hopes to transfer one of her children from St. Augustine School to the new schools.

"Andover has a nice curriculum, and the classrooms will be smaller," she said.

But for the next year and a half, residents will need to be patient with the noise, dust and blasting that accompanies a major construction project, said Plant and Facilities Director Joe Piantedosi.

"There will be increased traffic, and there could be some noise from some of the work that is going on. There's also some blasting that's going to take place, but abutters have been notified on that," said Piantedosi.

Now that crews have cleared the ground of brush, contractors will begin installing footings for the foundations, and delivering steel for the structure, he added. Construction should be completed in June or July of 2002.

But for future Cross Street students like Sarah London, who will be in fifth grade when the schools are completed, the most important thing is the end result.

"A lot of my friends will be going there," she said.