School construction costs are already skyrocketing. Tariffs could drive them higher.

Boston Globe

12-05-2025

'It's $286 million, and there's no going back to the towns,' Mushnick said. 'You have to find space in the project.'
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For many other Massachusetts school buildings in the works, the tariff costs are not yet so concrete. State finance officials said they haven't seen direct price hikes, while builders who work on municipal projects around the state said there's 'a lot of noise' but not yet much tangible impact.
All agree the risks are real, particularly for steel and lumber needs. Based on the experience of the pandemic, when supply chain problems drove up prices, builders don't expect prices to come back down even if tariffs are eventually lifted.
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In March, Trump
With materials accounting for about 40 percent of costs, builders estimated that if the tariffs on Canada persist, budgets could rise by 3 percent. That's a small fraction, but on a $400 million project it would mean more than $10 million extra levied on taxpayers.
'Construction prices are already high from the pandemic,' said Bryan Northrop, New England general manager of the construction and project management company Skanska USA. 'What history teaches us is ... even if the tariffs subside over time, we may not see the price return.'
The construction site of the new Tri-County Regional Vocational Technical High School building.
Matthew J. Lee/Globe Staff
A Massachusetts School Building Authority spokesperson
said the agency had not yet seen any direct price changes.
'It's hard right now to speculate on what it's going to mean, because we haven't seen any substantial changes yet,'
Matt Donovan said. 'We don't know yet.'
Donovan said once a project's budget and the agency's share are set, the state doesn't revise its contribution. If tariffs drive up costs on a project in the works, those costs will fall on the school district and their contractors. (When COVID supply chain issues resulted in higher prices for school construction, the state Legislature did provide some supplemental funding.)
Some districts build buffers into their plans. Lynn Public Schools, for example, has a maximum budget in their Pickering Middle School project to account for potential escalations, Mayor Jared Nicholson said in a statement.
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'Additionally, we are encouraging subcontractors to source materials domestically wherever feasible to help mitigate these impacts,' Nicholson said. 'Based on our current scope of unprocured materials, a reasonable guess is that tariffs could increase project costs by approximately three percent.'
Jonathan Winikur, an executive managing director at the engineering and design firm Colliers, said while tariffs will raise costs on the material side, it is actually a good time to be building if you can avoid them. As the commercial real estate market has collapsed post-COVID, construction labor costs have declined.
'We've got a lot of the workforce looking for work,' he said. 'It's a very good time to be a buyer, because the tariffs haven't hit yet, but the labor costs are soft.'
Leaders at Tri-County Regional, which serves about 1,000
children and 400 adults from 11 towns near Rhode Island, are calling on the federal government to relieve them of the additional cost, potentially by exempting trade schools.
Crews drilled 30 geothermal wells as part of the $24 million HVAC system being constructed at the Tri-County Regional Vocational Technical High School.
Matthew J. Lee/Globe Staff
Superintendent Karen Maguire recently went to D.C. to argue that their schools are crucial to the industrial growth President Trump says he is aiming for, noting the president recently
'That's what we're doing,' Maguire said. 'It would make sense to allow that to happen.'
And the new building is badly needed, the leaders said. Their current structure, built in 1973, regularly springs leaks, has holes in the walls from plumbing repairs, and lacks sprinklers and other safety features. Once advanced technical facilities are badly out-of-date, and much cannot easily be replaced. Because of safety and accessibility issues, renovation would end up costing nearly as much as rebuilding. The new building will also be equipped with a geothermal heating system and space for a new program on renewable energy.
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Unless they get relief soon, the project team will have to start cutting.
And the tariff impact at trade schools like Tri-County is twofold: not only do many of the schools need major renovations or replacements — they were mostly built around the same time — but they also use tariffed steel and other expensive materials in their classrooms.
A metal fabrication and welding teacher held a 1 1/4-inch 24-foot long pipe used for railings, roll cages, and bumpers, which used to cost $888. After the recent tariffs, it now costs $1,300 for Tri-County Regional Vocational Technical High School.
Matthew J. Lee/Globe Staff
Welding instructor Rick Tomasello described work his students are doing for a sculpture park in Franklin, including metal sheep and steel railings. The costs went up about 15 percent, he said. Many other shops are similarly in trouble, said Mushnick.
'The auto shop is going to get whacked,' he said. 'The idea of the tariffs is to get manufacturing in the U.S., but we're not there yet.'
Other shops, including advanced manufacturing, engineering, and metal fabrication, are also training workers in key industries tariffs are meant to support, Maguire, the superintendent, noted.
'We're not making a political stand for or against tariffs,' she said. 'Is there no way we could find to exempt a project like this?'
Christopher Huffaker can be reached at