Looking Forward - And Backwards

 

 

     The citizens of Brunswick have voted to approve the School Department's 2018 budget (even with the uncertainty of the amount of state contribution) and to locally fund the building of a new elementary school to replace the old Coffin School. What do we have to look forward to now?

 

     While I believe a new elementary school is needed (and the junior high school also needs replacement and a new name to match the middle school philosophy), I hope the building plan is tweaked to maximize taxpayer investment. Recent citizen commentary has included a reflection of the building of the Harriet Beecher Stowe School in 2007. We can recall that conflicting ideas included whether that school was needed, but was approved following citizen and Maine DOE approval. However, the school department had to support its building proposal in response to a citizen initiated lawsuit which claimed the new school was not needed. While the lawsuit was dismissed, the size of that new school was reduced to save money. Fast forward to the present and that school is now overcrowded and cannot accommodate the current student population, let alone any future growth. The plans approved for the current new school that will replace Coffin does exactly the same thing. The building is built to one use only - as 2 smaller schools built out as wings separated by shared administrative space on the ground floor. The architect originally showed plans which included 2 stories with classrooms (music and art included), gym with stage area, cafeteria, community spaces and hallways on both levels with the shared administrative space on the ground floor. Looking to the long term future (of hopefully more than 40 years), this one use plan decreases flexibility in use and growth. The key phrase that was echoed time and again is 'small school'.  The plan literally divides the building in half with separate wings for separate small schools. The second floor was reduced to cut costs. Does this sound familiar?  Did we not learn from reducing the size of Harriet Beecher Stowe School?  Repeat: let's maximize taxpayer investment so we don't risk another overcrowded school in the future.

    

     While we are addressing overcrowded schools. In the future, the School Department also needs to have flexibility in using the buildings we currently have to address year to year fluctuations in school populations. Building schools with maximum flexibility factored in and then using them with flexible plans can save taxpayers from having to build new schools.  IF the sum total of school buildings in the school department is unable to accommodate a growing school population, then an addition to a school makes sense....if it has been designed that way from the beginning. Instead of adhering to a fixed mindset of how to build new schools and how the schools we have are used, there may come a time when a school and/or schools' population require us to move students around in the different schools. One of the choices offered to deal with the current overcrowding of both Coffin and Harriet Beecher Stowe schools was to move some of the second graders to Harriet Beecher and the fifth graders to the Junior High which the architect determined was underutilized.  It was loudly dismissed. There was also a muted undertone of converting the two elementary schools back to a kindergarten through fifth grade configuration. The ONLY way the School Board could come to agreement on a new school plan was to not talk about reconfiguring these schools ---- which will cost money to retrofit Harriet Beecher Stowe.. Stay tuned for the chorus of reconfiguring our elementary schools to begin. Reconfiguring for the sake of reconfiguring is unproductive and expensive. If reconfiguration talks begins anew, discussion of the fifth grade moving to the junior high should be included, perhaps easing some of the use issues at the elementary level.