Move to Worcester allows growth at Central Mass. Collaborative

By Scott O’Connell
Telegram & Gazette Staff

Posted Dec 16, 2017 at 6:00 AM  

Updated Dec 16, 2017 at 12:09 PM

WORCESTER – Nearly a century ago, a factory at 14 New Bond St. produced engines and other heavy machinery for use in World War II.

Today, the address still develops a valuable resource. The site is now home to the Central Massachusetts Collaborative, which moved into the renovated facility earlier this year.

The CMC, formally known as the Central Massachusetts Special Education Collaborative, is one of the largest special education providers in the state, taking in autistic children, teens overcoming drug addiction and other students with behavioral or emotional issues. After moving from its former, smaller location on Hartwell Avenue in West Boylston, the organization is now poised to become even larger, with projections showing the collaborative’s student capacity capable of doubling over the next several years, to just over 800 students.

Already, the number of students served by the CMC’s various programs crept up from 416 November of last year to 439 last month, according to the organization’s executive director, Michael Tempesta.

“That doesn’t seem like a lot, but it really is,” he said, adding not only does that increase reflect the first growth after years of mostly stagnant numbers in West Boylston, but the new students are also coming from non-member towns – a key demographic that the CMC expects will grow more now that it has the space to accommodate them.

“The tuitions pay for the facility,” said Worcester Superintendent Maureen Binienda, who serves on the CMC’s two-person Board of Directors with Webster Superintendent Ruthann Goguen (Worcester and Webster are the collaborative’s only member communities, although it serves dozens of non-member towns and cities). “They have some great programs – I think it’s really going to be very attractive for families.”

Specifically, the organization’s move is contingent on the additional revenue that would be created through an increase in the number of student tuitions.

While Mr. Tempesta said the CMC got a good deal on the New Bond Street facility – it will pay a nearly $2 million annual lease in year one for the 118,000-square-foot facility, about $300,000 more than it did for the roughly 42,000 square feet it occupied in the West Boylston building – most of the optimism at the collaborative surrounding the move has to do with the programming possibilities the new space creates.

Already, the larger New Bond Street building has allowed the CMC to begin offering vocational programs like culinary arts and cosmetology to its older students. The facility also has a real gym, which the collaborative didn’t have at its former location, more modern classrooms and technology, and a large outdoor play area.

In other words, it feels like a real school now, said Mr. Tempesta, who added that’s not always the case for programs serving kids with special needs.

“Everything we have here, I had in my high school” in Saugus, he said, where he previously served as superintendent. “We’re really happy with how it came out.”

The building houses most of the CMC’s programs, including the Hartwell Learning Center, a therapeutic day programs serving special needs students in kindergarten through fifth grade; the Thrive program, which enrolls autistic children in all grades; Central MA Prep and Robert H. Goddard Academy, which take in students with emotional and behavioral disorders from seventh to 12^th grade; and Rockdale Recovery High School, a special public school for students recovering from addiction.

The CMC also continues to have programs at other locations in the city, including the Central MA Academy at 20 Rockdale St., a therapeutic day school for kids in sixth through 12th grade, and the Woodward Day School at 190 Fremont St., a transitional alternative school for students who have been expelled or otherwise excluded from their regular school.

Scott O’Connell can be reached at Scott.O’Connell@telegram.com. Follow him on Twitter @ScottOConnellTG