ROYALSTON – Athol Royalston Regional School District Superintendent Matt Ehrenworth met with Royalston’s Selectboard on Jan. 14 to go over the initial steps involved in the Massachusetts School Building Authority’s approval process for a new high school.

Among the first steps is the need for Royalston and Athol to commit to funding a feasibility study.

The district was recently invited to participate in the state agency’s Core Program Module, which includes an eligibility period comprised of several steps that lead to “local authorization of funding for (the) feasibility study.” These include certification of compliance, establishing a School Building Committee, documents outlining historic maintenance and capital planning practices, the completion of an educational profile and enrollment questionnaire.

The certificate of compliance requires the district to attest that it has exercised “due diligence in ascertaining and certifying the truth, completeness and accuracy” of the information provided to the MSBA when it applied to participate in the Core Program. According to the superintendent, the certification must be completed by May 30.

Ehrenworth said the district has 270 days to complete all of the steps in the eligibility period.

“I want to be very clear,” said the Superintendent, “one of the most important things to note is that there is absolutely no financial commitment until the end of 270 days from invitation. So, as of now, we will not have to allocate funding until January of 2026, and that is just for the feasibility study.

“To be clear,” he continued, “this is not appropriating money to build the school. This is just appropriating money to have a study done to see if the designers can come in and identify what we can do with the school.”

Ehrenworth said plans call for a building committee to be put together before the feasibility study gets underway.

“We would hope to have members from each community on that building committee,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll also put together some surveys and some focus groups as we get farther along in the process, but honestly, almost the entire first year of the process is simply us getting our paperwork together and speaking to the towns, and at the end of that 270 days we submit the things we have to submit, and we have to appropriate the money for the cost of that building feasibility study.”

Ehrenworth said much of the information required by the MSBA has already been compiled by the district, including enrollment and demographic statistics.

“The district has already done a lot of work leading up to this process,” he said.

During his first year as superintendent, he said, a company was hired to undertake a comprehensive study “of the district’s properties, buildings, and systems. That study allowed us to create a long-term capital plan for the district, which we now have.”

Among other things, Ehrenworth went on, the study revealed that the cost of ongoing maintenance of the existing high school would exceed those of building a new facility.

“So, to be clear, we have to fund a feasibility study,” said Ehernworth. “That involves getting a design company to come in and do an entire assessment of the property, including where (a new school) could go. It’s basically putting together a design for a new building. It does address feasibility, but it’s predominantly the bulk of the design.”

The cost of the feasibility study is estimated at $1.6 million. Based on the percentage of students in the district from each community, Ehrenworth explained, “Athol will end up assuming about 94% ($1.5 million) of the cost; Royalston will be closer to about 6% (96,000). Those are the appropriations that will need to happen.”

He added that the MSBA will reimburse the town’s for approximately 79.5% of the total cost. That means Royalston’s portion will amount to about $19,680, while Athol will need to pay $308,320. Ehrenworth did say the district could potentially pay the cost of the study, once MSBA’s reimbursement is settled, out of its excess and deficiency account.

Greg Vine can be reached at gvineadn@gmail.com.