[Jenny Graham]: In all the forums that we had and all the ways that people told us what they liked and didn't like, there was not a lot of energy around any of the B options. I think everyone looks at these B options, which are pretty heavy renovation with some addition, and says, that's going to be really disruptive, right? So enter the modular conversation, as it were. But these B options are interesting because they sort of endeavor to leave the school where it is, right? And mostly. and add to it to meet the ed plan. So that's the shift from from A to B in my mind. Am I thinking about that the right way?
[Matt Rice]: No that's exactly correct and when you can think about the A option as being we're just fixing exactly what is here and there's really going to be no tangible change in terms of the building environment. In the B option we actually have the chance to keep the existing structure but completely reconceive of the internal workings of the building in addition to sort of bringing it up to code and doing all those things that we have to do, we'll actually have the ability to really improve and meet the educational plan. So that's a key distinguishing factor between A and B. even though it looks like in the majority of this existing building will remain in place in terms of the structure that's here and sort of the general organization of the building. We will be reimagining it as part of this option.
[Jenny Graham]: Okay. And when the, when the building committee was talking about it, sort of two things like emerged for me in terms of like, if I had to distill what the conversation was, one part of that conversation that I heard, um, was about, um, embodied carbon, right? So like preserving the things that already exist here on the site. So that was like one thing that we talked a bit about and that we heard about. And I think the other sort of sentiment I heard was we should be looking at something that endeavors to like keep most of what's here if we can. And so to me, I think there were, and then I think there were other people who were like, I don't like any of these options. And for me, I thought like, personally, like I was okay with one of these moving forward because it gives us an anchor point in terms of like, if we wanted to keep the majority of this building, what could that look like? Where if you like sort of cast out all the bees, like, and there were many of them, you sort of lose that opportunity to have that point of comparison moving forward. So before we like dive into some of the features of this option, can you talk about embodied carbon and why that was so important to some of the members of the committee? Because I don't, like it's not a world I live in, so I'm learning about embodied carbon and like how it fits into building projects. So can you just give us the 10 second pitch.
[Matt Rice]: Yeah no sure I'll try to demystify that a little bit because it is a buzzword of sorts but it is a it's a good buzzword in terms of trying to understand what it's getting at and a lot of times we say that the greenest building that we can build is the one that we don't have to build from scratch if we can reuse some portions of existing building there's a real environmental benefit to that in the long run And when we say embodied carbon, it means that when, back in 1970, when this building was built, there was a tremendous amount of energy that was expended to be able to bring all of the materials for the concrete here to essentially put this building up.
[Jenny Graham]: There's lots of concrete in this building.
[Matt Rice]: Lots of concrete, which is a very high embodied carbon, embodied energy type of material, because there's a lot of heat that is used to actually generate it and get it to your on-site transportation. So what we're looking to do when we say salvage the embodied carbon that's here is to not ignore the fact that there was that huge investment in terms of just environmental energy used in putting the building together. And so we're trying to salvage that and leverage it moving forward so that we don't have to then spend the same amount of energy or maybe more to bring a new steel frame or a new wood frame here or a new concrete frame. We're trying to use what we have here as much as possible.
[Jenny Graham]: Great and I think the other thing that's maybe worth noting about sort of keeping this option is that it also would this option that we're looking at here would preserve Edgerly Fields albeit a renovated version of Edgerly Field but it would preserve the parking like where it is. It would preserve Edgerly where it is and then in this option where we're basically going up, right? So we're saying footprint as it exists today plus on top, right?
[Matt Rice]: Correct. And it's an important thing to keep in mind is that the educational plan and the educational program as laid out means that there needs to be more space here than exists in this building currently today. potentially 120,000 square feet of additional space. So the B1.2 option that was selected does suggest that over the B wing as well as the existing D wing, which is where the cafeterias as well as some of the PE spaces are, that we'd be building up two additional stories on top of the existing structure. And that's where we would get that additional space that we need to provide.
[Jenny Graham]: And just for context, that additional space is a combination of right-sizing spaces that exist in the high school today, like our CTE programs, which are dramatically undersized, like our special education program, which is undersized here, and then also sort of centralizing and co-locating our early childhood offering that is currently sort of scattered about the district and giving it like a real home and an anchor. where they're not being displaced every year by the trends that are happening in our elementary schools. So, and then finally bringing onto campus our students from Curtis Tufts who have every right to access all of the programming here in various ways, whether that's like during the school day or in an afterschool capacity. But it's really hard right now for that to be a reality because they are stationed all the way across The city so all of that programming coming here in a in a space and in a way that serves Students at Curtis Tufts and the needs that they have is like the other big thing when we talk about addition That we that we're talking about here
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