School Leaders Prepare for Official Hunking Ground Breaking

Haverhill School Superintendent James F. Scully.

Preparations are ongoing toward a ground breaking ceremony at 10 a.m., Tuesday, May 5, to officially kick off the new $61.5 million Hunking School construction project.

Recent pre-construction activities at the Hunking grounds off South Main Street include tree clearing near the existing school structure and fencing installed around the construction site.

The Massachusetts School Building Authority is to reimburse the city about 70 percent of the construction costs, according to a Haverhill Public Schools spokesperson. Haverhill voters last June passed a $21 million debt exclusion measure for the city’s share to replace the deficient middle school building with a grades K to 8 complex for about 1,000 students.

The existing 55-year-old middle school structure has decayed due to years of water infiltration into the crawl space below the school.