By Mike LaBella
mlabella@eagletribune.com
September 04, 2008 01:59 am HAVERHILL — We're at the tail end of summer and the weather is great — but it will rain sometime. And when the rain falls, it will be time to break out the buckets to catch water from leaks at Whittier Regional Vocational Technical High School. Whittier Superintendent William DeRosa said plastic buckets are ready to be set out in the gymnasium, in hallways and in classrooms, where for the last several years students have had to move their seats to avoid the leaks. DeRosa said he hopes the buckets will be a short-term solution to handle the leaks. He said Whittier plans to ask the state, as well as the 11 communities served by the school, for help paying for roof repairs. Whittier's leaky roof was noted during last year's accreditation review by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges. It was the most pressing issue Whittier must address, the report said. The school cannot solve the problem until it secures the estimated $2.5 million it will cost to fix the roof, DeRosa said. "If we knew it was going to rain tonight we'd have all the buckets in place," he said yesterday. "There's nothing we can do in terms of patching the roof. You can't find the source of the leaks." Whittier's enrollment is 1,200 students, about 685 of them from Haverhill. DeRosa said the buckets, once set out in anticipation of rain, are a new sight for incoming freshmen but a familiar one to sophomores, juniors and seniors who have had to contend with the leaks for the past several years. At its Sept. 10 meeting, the Whittier School Committee will consider approving an application to the state's building assistance program seeking money for the roof repairs. As part of the request, the school must form a building committee to plan and oversee the project. "It is very difficult to pin them down to a timeline," DeRosa said. "If we are approved for funding from the state it would probably be around 30 percent of the project cost." Whittier would then turn to its member communities to request that they approve borrowing money for the rest of the project. "Since I've been here, we've bonded two projects, including a $1.8 million maintenance and upgrade to the building's exterior brick as well as window replacement," DeRosa said. "That bond will be paid off in December 2009." DeRosa doesn't expect to meet with officials from its 11 communities to discuss funding the project until a year from now. "We're in the early stages of a long-range project," he said. Whittier Regional serves Haverhill, Newburyport, Amesbury, Georgetown, Ipswich, Groveland, Merrimac, West Newbury, Newbury, Rowley and Salisbury.
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