Ground Breaking Held for New Tri-County Voc

Above. Medway'sTri-Countyy School Committee representative, Tracy Stewart, and one of Franklin’s two School Committee representatives, Dr. Peter Wiernicki, participate in the ceremonial ground breaking Friday.

Friday morning, as students and educators went about their day, dozens of dignitaries from the 11-town Tri-County school district and from Beacon Hill filtered in to a spot, outdoors behind the school’s cafeteria. There, behind a chain link fence, construction equipment and workers were busy reshaping the remaining undeveloped parts of Bright’s Hill in preparation for construction of a completely new Tri-County Regional Vocational Technical School building.

Nearby, the school’s recently acquired and student-run food truck was preparing snacks and refreshments.

Superintendent Karen Maguire kicked off the event, introducing a Tri-County student speaker and the head of the building committee who was followed by Mary Pichetti, the executive director of the Massachusetts School Building Finance Authority, which provided about a third of the cost of the nearly $300 million facility.

Beacon Hill speakers included Senator Becca Rausch, Senator Paul Feeney, State Rep. Adam Scanlon, and State Rep. Jeff Roy.

Other State Reps were in attendance, including Wrentham’s Marcus Vaughn, were mentioned by Maguire but not by any of their colleagues at the podium.

Several sequences of photos were made of the ‘ground breaking’ including the Beacon Hill Crowd and the Tri-County School Committee, including Medway’s sole representative, Tracy Stewart, and one of Franklin’s two representatives, Dr. Peter Wiernicki. (Franklin’s other representative, Dr. Jennifer D’Angelo was unable to attend.)

In response to a question from Observer, Pichetti said that Massachusetts is the only state in the nation with a state-level building authority providing funds.

Scanlon, who had noted in his remarks, that North Attleboro provides the largest share of students to Tri-County, was asked whether he ever considered lobbying to have a second, new facility located there, so the district could have had two full schools, rather than just one replacement. No, he said. But then he noted that plans for a new high school in North Attleboro include facilities for providing career education, which might potentially siphon some students from Tri-County.