Sam Gurwitt Photo
The West Woods PTA last Wednesday.
Hamden officials turned their attention to groundwater Wednesday as part of their latest efforts to put the future of West Woods School on drier ground.
The town’s School Building Committee approved a $9,950 contract with GeoInsight Wednesday for a preliminary study of groundwater infiltration at the northern-Hamden elementary school.
A week earlier, Board of Education (BOE) officials met with the West Woods Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) to announce that the state had pulled a $15 million grant for the construction of a new school because the town missed an Oct. 31 deadline to begin construction. In his letter to the town, Konstantinos Diamantis of the state’s Office of School Construction Grants and Review (OSCG&R) wrote that “This project is canceled, but the District shall address water intrusion issues if the building is to be occupied during the planning of a new or renovated school.”
Wednesday’s contract with GeoInsight was the town’s first step in carrying out the studies the state asked for. Superintendent Jody Goeler said that he wants to have a contract under his belt before he and other district and town officials meet with the OSCG&R on Monday. After receiving the state’s letter, the school district sent out a Request for Proposals (RFP) for a study of water intrusion, and got three responses. Based on price and other factors, the district administration chose GeoInsight’s proposal.
Superintendent Jody Goeler.
The $9,950 is just the tip of the iceberg for finding all of the school’s water intrusion issues. The state’s letter did not include any details on the nature of the studies it wants to see, but finding and fixing all of the problems will cost millions of dollars, said officials. Architect Bill Silver said that his reaction to the letter was to get a professional on board as soon as possible with at least a preliminary study.
GeoInsight’s study will include four phases, says its proposal. It will begin by visiting the school to examine the building, its surroundings, and possible sources of water intrusion. Next, it will review any existing data, including any plans that show drainage and other systems. If need be, it will go back to the school for a third phase to take supplemental measurements. Finally, it will produce a feasibility study on possible sources of intrusion and how to mitigate them. According to the proposal, the project should take one to two months.
West Woods parents and School Building Committee members alike said they worry about health problems in the school. Parent Jeffrey Mital said he has friends who don’t want their kids to sit on the floor because they’re afraid of mold. School Building Committee Member Brad Macdowall, who also represents the West Woods neighborhood on the Legislative Council, said he has heard from parents who say their kids are having breathing problems that they never had before getting to the school.
Goeler assured the committee, and the parents in the audience, that there are no known health hazards in the school. He said that he met with the Quinnipiac Valley Health District (QVHD), which does health inspections of the school. They told him that “there are no issues related to health concerns at West Woods School,” he said. If there are any issues, he added, the district will act immediately.
“Can’t Assume In This Life”
Jeffrey Mital and Jim Pascarella.
While the groundwater study proved uncontroversial, and passed unanimously after a brief discussion, the committee spent about an hour beforehand parsing out what exactly went wrong with the West Woods project.
At the beginning of the meeting, Goeler read out a detailed timeline of the whole project, which the district later posted on a new website devoted to the project.
The saga began in July of 2013 when the town sent out an RFP for architects for a study of its northern schools. In September of 2014, the BOE saw a presentation of three options for the West Woods School: renovate the school as new, make alterations, or make alterations and expand.
The BOE originally opted to renovate the school as new. Renovating as new means renovating every system in the school, regardless of age, to make it last another 20 years.
In July of 2016, the School Building Committee changed the direction of the project. Rather than renovating as new, it approved construction of an entirely new building at a different site on the property. The state has a guideline for square footage per student in school construction and renovations. Based on enrollment projections, the West Woods School should be 55,000 square feet under the state’s guideline, not 86,000 as it is now. Goeler said that because of that guideline, the School Building Committee decided it would be more cost effective to build a new, smaller school because the state would not reimburse as much of the project if the town renovated the existing school.
In August 2017, according to Goeler’s timeline, the state began a new practice of requiring districts to develop strategic district-wide plans and fit construction projects into the broader context of those plans.
On Oct. 31, 2017, the state legislature approved a grant for the construction of a new West Woods School, triggering a two-year shovels-in-the-ground deadline. Later that fall, the BOE began to develop the 3R Initiative in response to the state’s new policy that required district-wide strategic plans. It is a district restructuring project that aims to racially balance schools and make the district more efficient and appealing, and which includes multiple school construction projects. Though the lynchpins of the 3R plan are adding a new wing at the middle school for sixth graders, bringing pre‑K to every elementary school in the district, closing two schools, and turning others into intra-district magnets, the BOE also began to consider West Woods a part of the broader project.
In November 2018, the state told Hamden that it would embrace the 3R plan, and that it would not support renovating the West Woods School; it would only support building a new school. Later that month, the BOE approved the 3r Initiative.
In April 2019, the town selected Fusco Construction as the construction manager of the project, and in July, Fusco estimated that the project would cost $33 million, not the $26 million that had been approved by the state. The architect value engineered the plan and got the cost down to $29 million, still $3 million over budget.
Committee Chair Myron Hul said Wednesday that better planning might have anticipated that cost increase. The $3 million increase corresponded with inflation rates between the plan’s inception and the summer of 2019, he said. “One thing that we do not do well as a town is project out the cost of what it will be in future dollars,” he said, urging the rest of the committee to remember to anticipate inflation.
Committee Chair Myron Hul and Member Marjorie Bonadies.
The cost increase delayed the project. Goeler wrote to the state in August requesting an extension of the Oct. 31 shovels-in-the-ground deadline for both the West Woods and Alice Peck School projects. Last week, Goeler received a letter from the state saying that it had approved the extension for Alice Peck, but not for West Woods.
“We were anticipating an extension. We didn’t get it. Shame on us. You can’t assume in this life,” said Committee Member and Legislative Councilman Jim Pascarella. “Finger pointing, deflecting responsibility, is nonsense. Everyone and anyone deserves blame — and credit — but blame.” The state, he said, is also to blame for changing guidelines and insisting the town build new rather than renovate.
Goeler and members of the BOE, town administration, and Legislative Council will meet with the state on Monday. He said that at that meeting, he will make a pitch to the state to allow the town to renovate the school rather than rebuilding it because fixes must happen soon.
Hul said that if the state directs the town to make much needed fixes on the school through million-dollar renovations, “it would be reckless to then throw all of those millions of dollars away to build a new school.” He said he thinks the state will understand that, and that he hopes it will support full renovations of the school rather than the construction of a new one.
I agree with Jim Pascarella that trying to place blame is pointless. Whether or not all are to blame is questionable.
Lack of leadership bought the town to this point. Going forward who plans to be a leader?