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At Francis J. Muraco Elementary School, the youngest students often wear their coats during centers time, sitting on a floor where the temperature can slip toward 60 degrees. The district put that detail in writing last year, when it asked the state for the fourth time to help rebuild or replace the school.
“Cold students cannot learn well,” the district wrote in the final draft of its April 2025 statement of interest.
On Wednesday, the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) Board of Directors invited Muraco into the feasibility study phase of its capital pipeline, an item listed in the board’s Oct. 28 meeting materials as “Invitation to Feasibility Study – Vote.”
Winchester will now hire an owner’s project manager and a designer to weigh options for a new or renovated school at 33 Bates Road. Only after that study will the MSBA consider committing to design and construction, and only then will the budget and the state’s share be set, according to the town’s Article 27 materials.
A building designed for another era
Built between 1965 and 1967, Muraco was one of the first open-plan elementary schools in Massachusetts, shaped around a multi-age teaching model the district long ago abandoned.
Nearly 200 windows are single-pane steel sash, and all but a few classroom windows are 60 years old; replacement hardware is no longer made. The exterior walls have no insulation. There is no elevator, and the 2017 Winchester Public Schools Facilities Master Plan found no sprinkler system and asbestos-containing floor tile.
For years, the gym doubled as auditorium and cafeteria. Last summer, about $800,000 in interim work turned the library into a cafeteria and moved the library into a former classroom.
A 2020 debt exclusion of up to $3.6 million paid for new boilers in 2021, roof repairs in 2022 meant to last to 2030 and replacement electrical panelboards in 2023. Those projects were meant to avoid costly failures, not to renew the building, according to Article 27 materials.
The building is aging while its enrollment shrinks. Muraco had 404 students in 2016-17 and 345 in 2021-22. At the end of August it had 286, the steepest decline in the district.
Enrollment drives a project’s size and cost. The 2017 master plan envisioned a new Muraco for 540 to 560 students.
District leaders point to what is coming. About 115 bedrooms in multi-unit housing are expected within or next to the Muraco district by 2030, and MSBA enrollment meetings have indicated a projected increase in the Bates Road area.
Superintendent Dr. Frank Hackett has invoked “Field of Dreams” and its promise that if you build it, they will come, citing higher enrollment at the new Lynch Elementary School.
Nine years of asking
Winchester filed for both Lynch and Muraco in 2017, 2018 and 2019. The state chose Lynch.
The new Lynch was completed in August 2025 with a total project budget of $94.8 million, according to the MSBA; in 2017, Flansburgh Architects had estimated it at about $50 million and a new Muraco at $45 million, in 2017 dollars.
After an April 2025 filing, the board invited Muraco into its eligibility period on Dec. 12, 2025.
The School Committee went back and forth on when to seek study money, voting 3-2 at one point to wait until fall before unanimously returning to spring. On April 30, Spring Town Meeting approved Article 27’s $1.5 million appropriation by a unanimous voice vote, clearing the two-thirds threshold.
Feasibility costs are eligible for reimbursement at Winchester’s rate of 32.47% of eligible costs. Applied to the full $1.5 million, that would return about $487,000 and leave the town about $1.01 million, depending on what the MSBA deems eligible.
The vote came weeks after a failed $11.5 million Proposition 2½ override forced about $3.3 million in cuts.
The town’s roughly $12.8 million Aberjona River culvert project behind the school is expected to take Muraco out of the 100-year floodplain and expand options for the site.
The earliest the MSBA could approve a project scope and budget is after July 1, 2028. If the steps stay on schedule, the district projects a new or renovated Muraco opening for the 2030-31 school year.
Will Dowd is a Massachusetts journalist who covers municipal government and community life for Winchester News. He is also the founder and editor of The Marblehead Independent, a reader-funded digital newsroom.
