Background
The Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA) provides grants to communities through a competitive process to assist with renovating and/or constructing school buildings. Through an eight-module process, the MSBA requires communities to provide detailed information on the feasibility of the proposed project. Plymouth South High School is seeking to redevelop their school and is in the third module, the Feasibility Study, of the MSBA process. In this stage, the school district and its team recommend the most cost effective and educationally appropriate preferred design solution to the MSBA Board of Directors for their consideration.
The Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH) and the Metropolitan Area Planning Council (MAPC) are conducting a health impact assessment (HIA) of the Plymouth South High School redevelopment proposal in order to examine the connections between school building in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and impacts on health. The HIA will assess and provide recommendations on Plymouth South High School’s redevelopment proposal. The purpose will be to engage and inform school districts and local Mass in Motion (MiM) partnerships about how to better ingrate health considerations into the local planning process to build or reconstruct schools.