PITTSFIELD — No one disputes Pittsfield High School’s 95-year-old building has seen better days. It’s in “poor condition overall,” a two-year-old facilities report says of the East Street landmark.

But fixing or replacing PHS will take time and money, Mayor Peter Marchetti told the School Committee on Thursday amid concerns about whether “our home under the dome” is a safe and adequate environment for students and teachers.

In the meantime, the city will conduct air and water quality tests to make sure PHS can be safely occupied and used when the school year starts in a little more than a month. Air quality tests were last conducted at PHS two years ago.

But Marchetti said despite the building’s deteriorating condition and the concerns raised by a two-year-old facilities report, it’s not believed to be unsafe.

“Yes, the school is in really poor condition. But I also think we don’t need to push the alarm button and create panic on whether certain things are there,” Marchetti said. “To me, if this was gloom and doom, [this report] would be a lot more strongly worded.”

When asked by School Committee member Ciara Batory “Is this building currently safe?” Marchetti replied “We think it is.”

The 2024 school facilities report says PHS "is in poor condition with many of its elements at or near the end of their life cycle.”

That report spurred the city’s School Building Needs Commission’s statement of interest to the Massachusetts School Building Authority, seeking inclusion in the authority’s next funding eligibility period. Marchetti supported that effort, as did the School Committee and the City Council in separate votes.

Marchetti toured the building last week with Superintendent Latifah Phillips, city Maintenance Director Brian Filiault, school Custodial Services Director Daniel Moore and city Finance Director Matthew Kerwood.

“We were looking at the cleanliness of the building, general wear and tear, and what might be the aging of a building versus high-alert concern,” Phillips said. “Which is why we were there with the experts [Filiault and Moore].”

“I don’t recall anything being a high alert concern,” she added.

From peeling paint on its iconic neoclassical dome to cracks in its foundation, Pittsfield High School is showing its 95 years.

Acceptance to the next MSBA funding cycle for PHS would fund about 80 percent of the project cost, making a renovated or new building financially possible. “From a financial standpoint the city is not able to do it alone,” Marchetti said.

If MSBA accepts Pittsfield High as hoped, there would still be a multiyear process, as seen currently with the West Side elementary project and as seen last decade for the construction of the “new” Taconic High School.

But that process would yet again spur a question the city has grappled with multiple times in its history: Should Pittsfield have one or two high schools? Marchetti said he expects MSBA would ask the city to answer that question.

According to Marchetti, the city has been told that an expansion of Taconic could accommodate no more than 300 additional students. That’s 400 students shy of Pittsfield High’s 2025-26 enrollment.

Daniel Elias, the committee’s longest-serving member, said at some point the city needs to reach a consensus on whether it should have one or two high schools.

For his part, “I view the two schools as a potential opportunity,” Elias said.

Taconic, on the verge of adding plumbing as its 16th career technical track, has proven itself beyond the district’s expectations, Elias said. And Pittsfield High, with its wide selection of advanced placement classes, early college opportunities and career pathways, is poised to pick up school choice students in the future.

“Either way we’re looking at a number of years before we get to a fix,” he said. “In the meantime we have to have a game plan.”

There’s about $1 million in the city budget for maintaining all of its school buildings, Marchetti said.

Last school year, the schools learned that heat from Pittsfield High’s brand-new boiler isn’t reaching classrooms because of ancient pipes, many of which are tucked behind walls and not easily replaced. Repairing or replacing those pipes would require cutting open walls and potentially finding other problems.

According to the report, the building lacks Americans with Disabilities Act compliance. Its foundation shows cracks, paint is peeling off its handsome neoclassical dome, and its brick facade is in poor condition. Its restrooms, ventilators, air handling units, exhaust systems and security systems were all rated as poor.

Marchetti noted that the city had attempted to add PHS to the MSBA program before, in 2008 and 2009, at the same time it sought to rebuild Taconic High School. Only Taconic was selected.

He also noted that Crosby, Morningside and Conte were all unsuccessfully submitted for eligibility in 2007 and 2011. The Crosby-Conte project was finally chosen in 2024.