Opening of Shawsheen Valley Technical High School

Type	Construction
Date	September 14, 1970

Shawsheen Valley Technical High School, the regional vocational high school of Bedford, Billerica, Burlington, Tewksbury and Wilmington, opened at 100 Cook Street in Billerica on Monday, September 14, 1970. The five towns formed the Shawsheen Valley Regional Vocational/Technical School District on November 16, 1965, chose a site in Billerica, and built the school from 1969 to 1970. Billerica, the largest of the member towns, paid the largest share of its costs from the start and sent the most pupils, and elects two members of the district's Shawsheen Valley Regional Vocational School Committee.

The project began at the annual town meeting of 1963, whose Article 54 asked the town "to create a special unpaid committee to be known as the Regional Vocational School District Planning Committee, to consist of three members, including one member of the School Committee, all to be appointed by the Moderator, which committee may join with a comparable committee or committees, from one or more neighboring Towns." Everett H. McCue, George M. Menezes and John T. Glavine served on it. The town's own schools were crowded, and in 1964 the school department wrote of its industrial arts program that "we need more space in High School. However, the Regional Vocational School, when voted in, should help this situation." At the annual meeting of 1965 Glavine read the committee's report of progress and the town voted $1,000 for its expenses unanimously.

On November 16, 1965 the district was "established by an affirmative vote of the five (5) towns, as verified by the Town Clerk of each respective town." On November 26 the moderator appointed Billerica's first two members, Menezes and Glavine, and at the committee's first meeting, in the School Administration Building in Billerica, Richard Keane of Wilmington was elected chairman and Glavine vice chairman. Billerica elected its members from 1966: McCue that March with 3,697 votes, and in 1967 Kenneth L. Buffum, who won by 1,330 votes to 1,270 for Frederic R. Brown and began more than fifty years on the committee. In 1966 the committee hired the architects Korslund, LeNormand and Quann and Benjamin Wolk as superintendent-director, and a site subcommittee settled on land "central to the district and located on Cook Street in Billerica." Costs were shared by enrollment; in 1966 Billerica's 7,008 pupils came to 26.1 percent of the district and $1,848.39 of its first assessment of $7,079.71.

The site was the old College Farm, the Richardson family's farm north of Cook Street between Alexander Road and the Shawsheen River. The district took it by an order of taking of February 14, 1967, awarding $50,000 in damages, and the farmhouse was moved across the street to 93 Cook Street. All five towns approved bonds of $4,225,000 in 1967 for the land, building and equipment, after public meetings in each town. A survey of local industry fixed twelve courses for 680 pupils: electrical, electronics, automotive, auto body, machining, metal fabrication, carpentry, chemical laboratory technician, drafting and design, technical and commercial art, merchandising and secretarial sciences, and culinary arts.

Bids were opened on January 22, 1969, and the committee, now chaired by Buffum, accepted the low bid of the James J. Welch Company of Salem, $3,826,739. Building began in April, after a six-week carpenters' strike, with Michael J. Boyle as clerk of the works. The state School Building Assistance Bureau set the estimated total cost at $4,863,238 and the estimated state grant at $3,161,105, and the first $2,000,000 of bonds were sold that year at 4.75 percent and the rest in July 1970 at 6.5 percent. The cornerstone was laid on May 27, 1970. The school opened on September 14, 1970 on a limited schedule with grades 9 and 10, by special permission of the Commissioner of Education because the building was not finished, and went to a full day on October 26. Of its 336 pupils on October 1, 1970, 108 came from Billerica, and Billerica's share of the district's 1971 budget was $283,140.39 of $891,356.

The school was dedicated on March 28, 1971, before an estimated 5,000 people. A third entering class brought the enrollment to 548 in the fall of 1971, an evening school opened that October with about six hundred adults registered by early 1972, and an afternoon program for students who could not be admitted to the day school was started. The demand led to Phase II, an addition that "will double the size of the facility," built in 1974 and 1975 and opened in September 1975, when it took in 565 more students and twelve more programs. The school became a partner of other town institutions as well: inmates of the Opening of the Middlesex County House of Correction painted its classrooms in 1989 and 1991, and the school helped the jail set up a culinary arts course in 2006. In 2026 the district entered the state school building program with a feasibility study of renovating, enlarging or replacing the 1970 building.

People

Everett H. McCue: Member of the planning committee from 1964 and Billerica member of the district committee elected in 1966; chaired its building subcommittee.
George M. Menezes: Planning committee member and one of Billerica's first two district committee members, appointed November 26, 1965.
John T. Glavine: Planning committee member who reported to the 1965 town meeting; first vice chairman of the district committee.
Kenneth L. Buffum: Billerica member of the district committee from 1967 and its chairman when the school was built and opened.
Frederic R. Brown: Candidate for the regional vocational school committee in 1967, losing narrowly to Kenneth L. Buffum.

Opening of Shawsheen Valley Technical High School

Opening of Shawsheen Valley Technical High School

People

References