Petition to Support Safe, Equitable, Sustainable Schools to Serve All of Wellesley's Children

We the undersigned support rebuilding the Upham Elementary School to best serve the entire Wellesley community, as well as commuters from surrounding towns. In doing so, our town would show it prioritizes:

• Student Safety, Traffic, and Quality of Life. An Upham build would improve all of these factors. A Hardy build causes a further decline in all three areas. Notably, the Hardy site poses safety concerns for Skills Program students, as it has poor site lines to the play areas and the site design is crowded with vehicle and pedestrian traffic.
• Neighborhood Schools. An Upham build would allow students to safely walk and bike to school – in their neighborhoods – with only 1% of WPS families required to cross Route 9. A Hardy build requires 1 out of 5 elementary school families (19%) to drive to school across Route 9.
• Equitable Educational Investment for all Wellesley Families. It is not equitable to invest $0 for children north of Route 9 who comprise more than 50% of the town's student-age population and whose student-age population is expected to increase 10% over the next ten years – while investing $134.25M for 2 schools south of Route 9 that do not have student populations that can sustain them now and whose student-age populations are projected to decrease 10% over the next ten years.
• Environmental Sustainability and Responsible Carbon Emissions. An Upham build would result in no increased traffic/CO2 emissions and a net increase in trees on the site, as presented in SBC meetings by Compass Project Management. The environmental sustainability analysis at the Hardy site has not been completed by the SBC. A partial initial analysis shows a Hardy build will result in CO2 emissions from increased traffic that would require 100+ acres of productive trees to be planted to offset that carbon pollution. In 2016, the Hardy site was already rate an "F" (the lowest grade) by traffic consultants and the proposal to build a larger elementary school at Hardy will exacerbate this.
• Permitting Costs, Project Delays, and Risks. Unlike the Upham site, there are significant feasibility problems including permitting risks at the Hardy site that can result in costly delays.
• Complete Site Plans. While the Upham site plan was completed before the SBC vote, the Hardy site plan is incomplete and still does not address road access onto the site, traffic circulation on the site, or access to the play areas or security of students in those play areas.
• Conflict of Interest and Fair Process. The SBC vote was a narrow 7-6 vote for Hardy-Upham. One SBC member has a financial conflict of interest as their spouse is a paid employee of The Hardy School. The Superintendent was required to be a voting member of the committee as charged by the SBC from the SC and Board of Selectmen, yet his vote was not included.

We, the undersigned, request a fair appraisal of the facts and for the complete facts to be compiled – on both sites – and for them to be presented to Wellesley residents. We ask the Board of Selectmen to request a full environmental sustainability analysis to be completed for the Hardy site and for the site plans to be completed addressing the above issues before a fair vote can be made using comparable data for both sites.

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Each Wellesley resident over 18 years of age may sign.