Middle school out for now
December 3, 2008
Keene Sentinel
A new middle school plan in Monadnock falls victim to economic worries
SWANZEY CENTER — The bad economy claimed another victim Tuesday night, as the Monadnock Regional School Board voted to remove a plan for up to $18.7 million for a new middle school from March’s school-district warrant.
“It’s just the economy. It’s just not the time,” said facilities committee Chairman Robert J. Smith of Swanzey, who said committee members had voted unanimously at a recent meeting to recommend tossing the warrant article.
The school board’s vote Tuesday night is a reversal of its action in August, when members voted to bring the proposal for a new middle school for 7th- and 8th-graders before the district’s residents.
At that same August meeting, the board also approved putting on the warrant another article for up to $12 million for renovations to the high school.
Both articles were billed by supporters as a way to address the range of facilities concerns threatening the high school’s accreditation status with the New England Association of Schools and Colleges.
In 2007, a public high school commission of the group voted to downgrade the high school’s accreditation status from “warning” to “probation.”
In an April 2007 letter, the commission called the 46-year-old middle/high school building on Route 32 “crowded, over-extended and tired” and cited facility problems among numerous reasons for commission members’ decision.
Before the board voted to get rid of the middle school warrant article Tuesday, former facilities chairman Karen A. Cota of Roxbury — who had been a strong advocate of building a new middle school but recently resigned from the school board — spoke against delaying action.
“The economy has hit all of us pretty hard,” she said, but added, “We cannot wait until it gets better to fix our school. Renovations are only getting more expensive.”
Still, multiple school board members spoke in favor of getting rid of the article.
“You can’t do this. Not today, not in this economy,” said Troy school board representative Douglas Lyman, who said it would be difficult for the board to explain to voters both middle school and high school building proposals, along with the need for other projects in the district.
Swanzey representative Jane Fortson said she was similarly on board with removing the article. But she made an unsuccessful attempt to table the issue because she said she wanted to hear more of a rationale for nixing the plan. And, she said, the board should be discussing options for both the potential new middle school and current middle/high school building at once.
“We considered them as a package. But we separated that package,” she said. The $12 million in facility improvements still on the warrant was originally pegged for renovations on the building if it only housed grades 9-12, she said. However, fixing overcrowding if the school continues to hold all five grades would be a bigger project.
The $12 million slated to appear on March’s warrant is less than architects’ $28.7 million cost estimates for renovating the middle/high school to house grades 9-12. Renovating the building for grades 7-12, according to the firm, would cost $40.1 million.
Troy representative Susan Oerman said she agreed with Fortson.
“You’re talking about a lot of money. It’s going to affect a lot of people and I would like to have the opportunity to look at it as a whole,” said Oerman, adding that she needed more information before moving forward.
But board member James I. Carnie of Richmond said, “I think in this case we need to do this, and take it one step at a time.”
Smith said the facilities committee still needs to discuss future of the $12 million warrant article — whether, for example, that figure should be increased or the same amount of proposed money stretched.
Meanwhile, with the new building proposal off the table, the school board has also yet to come to consensus about a long-range plan for the middle school — another reason Fortson said she disagreed with turning down the middle school proposal Tuesday night.
After the school board’s vote, middle school Principal Linda Sutton said she was disappointed about the new middle school plan being axed from the warrant.
“I thought that it would be better to table it,” said Sutton. She has said splitting the middle school and high school would benefit her students by giving them more room and removing some of the social pressures that come from sharing the space with much older teenagers.
And even if voter approval of the new middle school proposal was a longshot, she explained, bringing it before residents on the warrant would have helped educate them about the need and cost of such an undertaking.
Keeping 7th- through 12th-grades in the same building, she said, “will affect (student) achievement in the long run.”