July 17, 2008
Keene Sentinel
SWANZEY CENTER — When money’s tight in schools and homes alike, where do you spend a dollar that might already be stretched too thin?
Monadnock Regional School District voters will have to consider this as school officials move closer to putting a major building project on the March warrant.
“We need to set a direction,” board member and facilities chairman Karen A. Cota said at Tuesday night’s school board meeting. “The board has to decide, ‘What are we going to do?’ And I think the board has to make that decision real soon.”
The board has yet to determine whether it will support extensive renovations of the existing middle/high school building in Swanzey Center or building a new, two-grade middle school.
Regardless of what form it takes, a building project would likely require tapping tens of millions of dollars in an already strained district — a district that has opposed numerous expenditures, such as operating budgets and teachers contracts, in recent years.
At a meeting in April, board members voted to put an article on the March warrant involving some kind of improvement to the middle/high school building, and Business Manager Katherine E.L. Chambers said the specifics must be set by October.
Facility woes at the nearly 50-year-old middle/high school have long been a focus. These concerns were heightened last year when a commission of the New England Association of Schools and Colleges cited overcrowding and building problems when it downgraded the high school’s accreditation status to probationary.
As part of a voter-approved school master plan process, Connecticut architectural firm Kaestle Boos Associates drew up cost estimates for several multimillion-dollar building scenarios to address the accrediting association’s facility concerns (see box).
These options include everything from constructing a new middle/high school to rebuilding both schools in separate buildings.
But two of the proposals that seem to have gained the most traction with the school board have been the possibility of building a new middle school for either 7th- and 8th-graders or 6th- through 8th-graders. These options would still leave work to be done at the existing middle/high school, which would then be renovated to just house 9th- through 12th-graders.
The school board is also eyeing a third option: renovating and expanding the middle/high school to continue housing grades 7-12.
At Tuesday’s meeting, Cota made her preference clear — renovate the high school for grades 9-12 and build a new, two-grade middle school.
“I know it’s a huge pill to swallow,” said Cota, of Roxbury, who nevertheless called her proposal “the right thing to do.” Cota said separating the middle and high schools would address a concern she’s heard from district residents about mixing a broad age group in a single building.
And, she said, the costs of the building projects could be softened by capping the amount of renovation work at the high school — for example, axing the 16,436 square feet proposed for a new wing for administration offices, music rooms, the school nurse and a science room.
School board member Robert J. Smith of Swanzey said he’d prefer a 6th- through 8th-grade middle school because it could solve the space constraints at the elementary schools that school officials say stand in the way of the district moving from half-day to full-day kindergarten.
But Smith withdrew his suggestion after school board members Douglas Lyman of Troy and Edward W. Jacod of Gilsum said moving 6th-graders from their elementary schools would doom the proposal.
Emerson School Principal and Fitzwilliam resident Karen M. Craig similarly said while she supports full-day kindergarten, her town will not support a plan to place 6th-graders with older children.
And Jacod warned that, in Gilsum, there’d be “a huge groundswell against the idea of moving 6th-graders, and you will stop everything dead in its tracks.”
The school board ultimately decided to send Cota’s two-grade middle school proposal to the finance committee to draw up possible funding mechanisms. The finance committee will also compile similar information for renovating and expanding the middle/high school for students in grades 7 through 12.
After the meeting, finance committee member Jane Fortson of Swanzey said the group will also be looking at options such as the period of time over which the district would plan to pay back the loan.
Still, Lyman predicted that if external economic pressures such as rising oil costs continue, any building proposal will fail.
“We have so many families that are in the district — their children are getting free lunch, which means that the family is not making that much money,” Lyman said.
Cota said she counts herself among those who are struggling, yet said “Band-Aid” fixes to building problems are no longer an option.
“I hear what you’re saying,” she said. “But I think it costs us more in the end if we do nothing.”
The school board will continue this discussion at its next meeting on Aug. 19 at 7 p.m. at Monadnock Regional Middle/High School. More facilities information can be found at:
http://www.mrsd.org/KBA/index.html