Volunteers helping with beautification at Lynn's Marshall Middle School

LYNN - Lynn residents driving by Marshall Middle School may not even recognize it anymore. After extensive aesthetic work over the summer, administrators said they hope the new Marshall will avoid becoming the hotbed of violent activity it was known as last year.

For the past two months, around 80 volunteers from numerous divisions of General Electric and its sub-companies have devoted over 4,000 hours of time to a massive beautification project at the school.

“It’s been a collaborative and cooperative effort with GE, which has let the GE volunteers come over, and they have been working feverishly over at the school for the last month and a half,” said Superintendent of Schools Nicholas Kostan. “They have done a wonderful job in terms of working outside and inside the building, and a lot of positive changes have been made because of them.”

John Pantazopoulos, project manager for the Marshall improvements, said nothing could have been done without help from the city.

“They gave us a budget, basically, by giving us $20,000, and we’re very grateful,” Pantazopoulos said. “Every foot we put forward, the city of Lynn put the same foot forward.” Grants were also received by Lynn Plant 4, the GE volunteers, and outside sources to bring the budget to $30,000 — quite small for such an extensive beautification project.

“That’s what made the volunteers so important,” Pantazopoulos said. “Otherwise, the budget would have skyrocketed. So we set up a mini-company with the volunteers, we treated it as what you would do in a typical project. From there, it took on a life of its own.”

The volunteers were split into smaller teams, each focusing on a certain aspect of the renovation project. Teams worked on landscaping, hallways and classrooms, a mural, and the locker rooms. The teams were so far ahead that more renovations were completed than planned.

“We repainted and rehabbed more hallways than planned- we did four,” Pantazopoulos said. “We re-did the boy’s locker room, but then we had extra time, so we actually made a girl’s locker room out of a closet.”

As for landscaping, new shrubbery and flowerbeds have been planted, new sprinklers are in place, and a new lawn has been laid out. Other capital improvements in the building’s functionality include a new boiler and roof repairs.

“It’s amazing how everything is panning out,” said Cathie Latham, assistant superintendent of schools. “It was a group effort on all accounts, and it’s great to see it all coming together.”

Paul Baratta, solutions manager for GE Security, said the project at Marshall was not a small task.

“We have volunteers from GE Aviation, GE Security, interns, and employees from other GE companies around Massachusetts,” Baratta said. “A group of volunteers even came up from Florida. It was a very big effort.”

But the Marshall project is not the only one of its kind.

“We’re doing this all over the country in different schools,” Baratta said. “We think that if you can improve the environment the students learn in, they take more pride in it, and it improves their learning and it makes school a place they want to go.”

School Committee member John Ford said many volunteered because they saw it as an opportunity to help their community.

“There haven’t been any big issues so far with this because everyone is willing to help out,” Ford said. “A big element of it was the opportunity for the school system to truly benefit, and for the city of Lynn to help with that.”

After the overhaul is complete, Kostan hopes to hold an open house so members of the community can see the new Marshall.

“I think the parents and staff will be appreciative of the changes,” Kostan said. “And hopefully it will lead in an improvement in the attitudes of some of the kids.”

Kostan said he is confident that the new aesthetic improvements will boost morale at Marshall, and that there won’t be any problems like the food fights and shooting threats that there were in the past.

“Quite a bit has been done to this point, and I think making a lot of these changes will make it a much more welcoming place,” Kostan said. “It will be a more welcoming atmosphere to help students be engaged in the learning process. I don’t see the same problems happening again, not after these new changes.”

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