Chelsea Middle School Chelsea, Massachusetts

Rendering: David Pendery

The City of Chelsea, MA, has embarked upon an ambitious $120 million school construction program to provide brand new facilities for its 5300 public school students by September 1996. The Chelsea schools have been operated through a public-private collab oration between the Chelsea Public Schools and Boston University since the City was placed under State receivership after its 1991 bankruptcy.
To foster small-school benefits for this new middle school’s 1100 sixth- to eighth-graders, the school will function as two separate schools with individual identities and administrations, one for 500 students and one for 600. Each will be organized acco rding to the team or cluster concept, with the building’s design providing each 100-student team with its own area consisting of three classrooms and a science room. All facilities shared between the two schools, including library, cafeteria, gymnasium and community/assembly space, are located on the main floor. Located on the site of the existing middle school, the Williams School, the new building’s construction will follow a complex three-phase schedule, involving the erection of temporary quarters for the students while the old school is being demolished and the new one built. Occupancy is scheduled for September, 1997.