LYNN — Officials celebrated the beginning of construction at the new Pickering Middle School Friday. Students were also present and shared in the fun of throwing around dirt. Work on the $175 million building project started in July, four years after the City submitted its statement of interest to the Massachusetts School Building Authority, and seven years after a vote to approve a new Pickering and additional middle school in West Lynn failed.
Mayor Jared Nicholson thanked the Pickering Middle School Building Committee, the state delegation, the Massachusetts School Building Authority, and all the project’s partners for which the beginning of the construction would not have been possible. “We are thrilled to see this project come to fruition and excited for the generations of students who will benefit from this state-of-the-art building,” Nicholson said. He also highlighted the “inequitable” system under which new school buildings must be approved for funding, reflecting on the 10-year journey that brought them to the ground breaking.
“Various systems confine us to a future that’s at best, incoherent and, in truth, unjust. How can we possibly get to the next 10 schools if we can’t fix the one before us that’s most obvious?” he said. Nicholson said while school enrollment across municipalities in the state has remained flat or has decreased, enrollment across the City’s school district has continued to increase.
He emphasized that most of the school b.