The firm retained to develop a long-term master and educational facilities plan for the Warwick school district, is in high gear due to the tight time constraints imposed on it.

Symms, Maini, McKee & Associates (SMMA) was awarded the $238,243 contract by a 3-2 School Committee vote on Feb. 10 and has 90 days to complete its study and present a recommendation to the School Committee.

Edward Frenette, principal architect and vice president of SMMA, presented an update to the committee at its meeting last Wednesday.

“We’re in the information gathering stage. There are three stages: gathering the information, analyzing the information, and developing alternative master plans to be decided upon,” he said.

The committee called on the outside consultant after it failed to approve the recommendation of its own commission to close Aldrich and Gorton Junior High Schools and combine them in a middle school using Veterans Memorial High School. Vets would be closed as a high school, thereby leaving the city with two middle schools and two high schools at a projected savings of more than $2.5 million annually.

Frenette said there are three parts to each stage, including demographics analysis, regarding how many students are affected and where are they located; facilities analysis of all the buildings; and educational planning to determine the curriculum and how the physical facilities will help deliver that curriculum, as well as providing alternatives and improvements.

“There’s not a lot of interchange of information in the beginning stages, there’s some more in the analysis stage, but most of the communication comes during the final planning phase,” he said. “We’re at the beginning of the information acquisition and data collection phase now.”

However, Frenette said his firm is doing more than just gathering information.

“We’re starting to produce something; we’re not just collecting,” he said. “We’re doing something we’ve never done in the past, which is a survey of the district where we tour all the schools. We’re meeting with the superintendent next Wednesday to tour the elementary schools, and we’ll do the secondary schools on Thursday. Then we’ll meet with educational leadership for discussions.”

Frenette said there would be about a month left to produce a recommendation once all the data collection is complete.

“Normally, if this were a six- or nine-month process, we would have three months to germinate ideas,” he said. “We don’t want to rush that process, so we’re kick-starting it early, before all the data is gathered and before the analysis starts.”

School Committee Chairwoman Jennifer Ahearn said the seed has been planted for everyone in Warwick and has germinated for a while, with many previous discussions regarding consolidation and how the district should move forward.

“So a lot of people here have a lot of information that will get to you to be massaged into your recommendation,” she said.

Frenette said the two sides would work together.

“We’ll take our experience and add it to yours, which may uncover things you haven’t seen [since] it’s being viewed from a different perspective,” he said.

Frenette said the firm doesn’t want to rush the creative process.

“Architects and engineers are somewhere between a short-order cook and a chef; we won’t turn up our nose if you don’t like the dish like a chef would, but we’re also not here to put a pickle on a burger,” he said.

Frenette said a separate team will be looking at buildings and determining facility conditions. He said he was worried when the snowstorms kept popping up but is hoping they’re done now.

“We need to see the roofs of the buildings to do assessments, so it’s a visual problem, but it’s also a liability problem because we don’t want anyone falling off or going through a skylight, which has happened before,” he said.

Frenette said there’s not a lot of product at the moment, however the firm has produced a lot of organizational documents to get everyone on the same page, including a glossary of vocabulary terms.

“Demographics [analysis] kicked off on Monday [March 16] with the superintendent,” he added.

School Committee Vice-Chairman Eugene Nadeau asked about the level of cooperation from school staff.

“The cooperation has been excellent. The city has been cooperating and helpful as well,” Frenette said. “There have been no hiccups or impediments so far.”