nothin Hamden Scrambles To Meet School Construction… | New Haven Independent

Hamden Scrambles To Meet School Construction Deadlines

Sam Gurwitt Photo

Architect Bill Silver.

As Hamden prepares plans for school building projects that state officials have said they hope will serve as a model for other Connecticut towns, the June grant application deadline is fast approaching — and some parts of the plans remain uncertain.

In November, the Board of Education voted to approve the projects as part of a 3R” initiative. That includes closing the Church Street and Shepherd Glen schools, incorporating the Wintergreen building into the district, instituting universal pre‑K, turning certain elementary schools into magnets, moving all sixth graders to the middle school, and redoing the district’s attendance zones.

The construction projects involved are estimated to total around $60 million.

Architect Bill Silver is in charge of preparing the construction plans and writing the grant application, or SCG 1049, that the town must submit to the state Office of School Construction Grants and Review. If the application is approved, the state would reimburse Hamden for two thirds of the cost of construction. The state’s approval process takes a full year.

Though the absolute deadline for the SCG 1049s is June 30, the state has urged Hamden to get the applications in earlier — by June 1.

Before that can happen, the Board of Education has to finalize the plans, at which point it must submit them to the Legislative Council for approval.

Though the BOE approved the plans in November, major aspects are still uncertain, including which schools will undergo large-scale renovations that will require state reimbursement.

What they really want to see,” said Town/BOE Projects Director Julie Smith, referring to the state, is that you have a comprehensive plan moving forward.” That means planning not just a few years ahead, but for the next 10 to 20 years.

Smith said the state has been supportive of Hamden’s plans. The last two times she was in Hartford, she said, she was told that the state sees Hamden’s restructuring project as a potential model for other towns in the state.

The only thing they’re saying to us,” she added, is, Get a move on it.’”

Board members including Chair Chris Daur have said they are concerned about the fast-approaching deadline. They recommend moving forward with plans even if that means some numbers are not perfect.

Other school board members, including Myron Hul, said they want to make sure that no numbers go unvetted and cause unexpected overages.

BOE Member Myron Hul.

The board aims to submit grant applications by the June deadline for renovations on the middle school, for renovations to create magnet schools, and for improvements that will allow pre‑K programs to be added at schools that don’t already have them.

Yet the board has not made a final decision about which schools other than the middle school will undergo major renovations, and which ones will only require minor changes. Those decisions depend not only on which buildings are in greatest need of renovation, but also on the future use of the school. That, in turn, hinges on which schools will become magnets. The board planned to make that decision at a meeting this past Tuesday night, then pushed it back another week.

New Middle School Wing

Silver and Petrucelli

Plans for the new wing at the middle school. The gym classroom shown here would instead be a larger auxiliary gym.

The renovation that’s conceptually furthest along is the addition of another wing and a few other spaces to the middle school to accommodate sixth graders. 

The plan that Silver recommended at a BOE meeting on Tuesday would add 22,050 square feet to the school and would cost around $9.9 million. It includes aspects of two different plans that Silver presented to the board earlier in the month.

When the board made its decision in November, it anticipated adding only a single wing to the school. Yet the plans that Silver presented in early March included additions to the cafeteria, gym, and potentially a second new wing.

Silver explained that depending on the number of students that come to the district from the Wintergreen school, which is currently an inter-district magnet school run by ACES, space might be tight with the addition of only one new wing. He also explained that after talks with school administrators, he had concluded that the cafeteria and gym both need more space.

In early March, he presented a one-wing plan, that would also include a cafeteria addition and a small gym classroom, and a two-wing plan, with the same cafeteria addition along with a new auxiliary gym rather than just a classroom. After talking to Principal Michelle Coogan and former Principal Dan Levy, he determined that something in between would be best: one additional wing and the cafeteria improvements along with the full auxiliary gym from the two-wing plan.

Though space may be tight in the first few years after sixth graders arrive at the school, the district projects an enrollment decline that will ease up the strain after a few years.

I believe there will be a period of time before enrollment declines when it will be challenging,” Coogan told the board, but I believe we can meet the challenge.” She explained that administrators will have to get creative about scheduling classrooms so that teachers can move to rooms that are unoccupied at certain periods.

The cafeteria addition is the result of an already existing need. Limited cafeteria space has always been a constraint since we moved into the building,” said Coogan. The hallway leading into the cafeteria is too small, and creates a traffic jam that gives students at the end of the line less time to eat lunch. The school currently has five lunch waves, each lasting only 21 minutes.

Hamden Middle School Principal Michelle Coogan.

The cafeteria addition would add more hallway space for students to enter and exit, and it would also add seating room.

Coogan said she hopes to get a full auxiliary gym, as Silver presented, because of conversations she had with physical education teachers. They told her that more space would allow them to be safer and offer a higher level of instruction. An auxiliary gym would be better than just a smaller classroom space, she said, adding that she was simply aiming for what would be best with the understanding that it might not happen.

Magnet School Uncertainty

BOE Member Walter Morton.

When the BOE approved the 3R initiative in November, one of its most popular aspects, according to multiple board members, was the creation of intra-district magnet schools. Those schools would both create more choice and opportunities for families within the district. They could also help achieve the racial balance among schools that the state has told Hamden it needs.

Yet at the meeting on Tuesday, it became clear that the board is falling behind on its decision about which schools to convert to magnets.

At a meeting at the beginning of March, the board had decided it would discuss the magnets at the meeting Tuesday. Superintendent Jody Goeler had floated the idea of a 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. magnet school at Helen Street. But on Tuesday, the board did not approve any magnet school plans as it had intended to do. 

Goeler explained at a School Building Committee meeting Wednesday that in order to create a successful magnet program that will help the town improve the racial balance in its schools, we’re going to have to come up with a plan that will voluntarily move students from their attendance zones.” Successful incentives, he said, include programming, services, and facilities. It’s possible, he added, but requires planning and money. We have to really have significant magnetization.”

That planning may be a stretch so close to the deadline. Yet when it seemed that the board might have to forgo the magnet school planning for now, partly because the SCG 1049s don’t necessarily require details on the programming that will take place in a given school, some members pushed back.

One of the biggest pieces of the 3Rs was the magnet schools. That’s exactly what we sold to the community,” said Walter Morton. Here we are in the 11th hour and we still haven’t had a discussion about magnet schools.”

I have a responsibility to the students in this town,” said Melissa Kaplan. I voted on something. I want to see it through.”

Goeler said that he needed direction from the board about which schools they wanted to see become magnets, which up to this point he has not received. In order to have a successful magnet program, the town will need at least three magnet schools with good facilities and attractive programming. He added that it can’t be done cheaply.

He said that at the next meeting, scheduled for the following Tuesday, March 26, he would present a proposal for potential magnet schools. He told the board that he was tentatively considering proposing Dunbar Hill as a STEM magnet, Ridge Hill as a global studies and foreign language magnet, Helen Street with a 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. school day so that parents could drop their kids off before work and then pick them up after, and Bear Path as an outdoor-focused magnet. The presentation has not yet been made, however, and those ideas were just a preview of what it might be.

Ridge Hill? Dunbar Hill? Both?

Superintendent Jody Goeler: For magnets, there needs to be real “magnetization.”

When Hamden began its school construction process a few years ago, it applied for grants to renovate Alice Peck, West Woods, and Shepherd Glen. The Alice Peck and West Woods renovations are still on — the School Building Committee approved short-listed construction managers for West Woods and the Alice Peck cost estimate and project manual on Wednesday — but the BOE voted in November to shut Shepherd Glen down.

At the time, the board planned to renovate Dunbar Hill instead of Shepherd Glen. Yet at the meeting on Tuesday, to the surprise of a few members of the board, Silver presented plans for renovations to the Ridge Hill School.

When Hul asked why the board was suddenly talking about renovating Ridge Hill rather than Dunbar Hill, Goeler explained that he had heard strong support for renovations from the Ridge Hill community, which he had not heard from Dunbar Hill.

Neither Ridge Hill nor Dunbar Hill are in as dire need of renovation as Shepherd Glen or West Woods. Yet Goeler explained that the town could use the 3R initiative as an opportunity to use state money to do renovations that will have to happen in the next few years anyway.

Rather than the town of Hamden paying the cost of capital projects, we can take all of the things we know we need to do in the next five years and put this into our proposal,” Goeler told the Independent. He said that the town can be opportunistic and create the magnet programs that it wants in schools that need renovations.

At both Tuesday’s BOE meeting and Wednesday’s School Building Committee meeting, Silver presented his findings on a potential renovate as new” project at Ridge Hill. To renovate a school as new means to renovate every system in the school without having to build a whole new school. A renovate as new project can get a higher rate of reimbursement than a school construction project because of a law passed about ten years ago, he explained. At the time, towns were tearing down schools and building news ones because they could get state money to do so, rather than simply renovating. The legislation created an incentive to renovate rather than rebuild because it is cheaper for the state.

Silver created a list of all of the systems at Ridge Hill that would need updating, which included the HVAC, the heating, the windows and skyrooves, and a number of other features. He estimated, using a standard of $249 per square foot, that the renovations would cost a little under $16 million. The renovations should hold for 20 years, which according to Goeler is the highest level of school renovation.

Yet Ridge Hill may not be the only school undergoing serious renovations in addition to the middle school. Goeler told the Independent that the magnet plan he will present to the board on Tuesday will also involve renovating Dunbar Hill. Though he could not give an estimate of the cost, he said it was enough to justify seeking state aid. 

Other potential magnets should require much less money to convert. For instance, Silver has estimated that a new parking lot and bus drop-off area at Helen Street required for magnetization would cost somewhere around $68,000. Though that number is far from certain, he said it would be small enough that state aid might not be necessary.

Pre‑K Additions

Silver and Petrucelli

The board also hopes to submit grant applications by June that would cover the expenses of adding pre‑K programs to the schools that do not already have them. As those additions should cost in the order of tens of thousands, rather than tens of millions, Silver has urged the board to consider forgoing grant money in order to focus on those projects that need it most. That decision, however, is ultimately up to the BOE.

Three schools will need to add pre‑K programs: Bear Path, Ridge Hill, and Spring Glen. Adding pre‑K to schools comes with a host of complications, Silver and Petrucelli’s Chris Nardi explained to the board on Tuesday. Pre‑K classrooms must be at ground-level, they must have special toilet room access, and they must have an independent parent pickup and drop-off location. In addition, if there are three-year-olds in a classroom, it is considered a nursery, and requires a second exit. Though pre‑K technically starts at 4, Hamden’s pre‑K classrooms may include some three-year-olds who have birthdays in the fall.

At Bear Path and Spring Glen, adding pre‑K classrooms should be easy, Nardi explained. In both cases, there are ground-level rooms that can be easily converted into pre‑K classrooms because they already have toilets nearby, areas outside that can become separate drop-off and pickup locations, and a door can just be punched through the wall. Silver estimated that both would cost only around $15,000.

Ridge Hill won’t be quite as easy. Nardi presented a few options, one on the East side of the building that would require extending the parking, another on the South side. The changes are estimated to cost around $1 million.

The board is scheduled to meet with its consultants again on Tuesday, and Goeler is to present his proposal for magnet schools. The board hopes to then get its plans to the Legislative Council at the April 15 meeting.

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