Paul Bass Photo
As officials scurried behind closed doors to revive a plan to build a new $45 million home for Strong School, Susan Bonanno ventured into the current property’s “playground.”
“We don’t let kids on on this,” said Bonanno, a teacher at the school, inspecting rusted bars and pointing to missing bolts. “It’s too dangerous.” The rundown equipment all needs to be replaced before students can play there, she said.
An adjoining patch of grass, shared by a parking lot and Legion Avenue, is not an ideal spot to play either. But the school (formal title: 21st Century Communications Magnet and Lab School) sometimes brings the kids out there anyway — when the combination gym-lunchroom-assembly hall is already filled.
Bonanno and Principal Susan DeNicola were illustrating an argument that school and City Hall officials have been pressing: That the school at Orchard and Legion is a dark, crumbling mess that has outlived its usefulness and makes no financial sense to rescue — especially when New Haven can spend roughly the same money to help build a larger, state-of-the-art school in conjunction with Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU).
That argument is at the center of the great budget battle of 2015.
On Tuesday night the Board of Alders will cast the final vote on approving a new city operating budget and capital projects budget. Strong School became a flashpoint in that process last week when an alder committee unexpectedly slashed $10.5 million from the mayor’s proposed capital project budget. That money would be the city’s share of the cost of building a new $45 million home for K‑4 Strong on SCSU’s campus, to include a model collaboration with the university’s education school. (Read about that here.)
“Be Creative”
Alders Jeanette Morrison and Al Paolillo, Jr., who led the charge, argued that New Haven can’t afford to go deeper into debt. They argued that the city has already built enough new schools ($1.6 billion worth and counting), and now has to struggle financially to maintain them.
Enlisting Strong parents, Mayor Toni Harp and schools chief Garth Harries have since lobbied hard to restore the money at this coming Tuesday night’s vote. They argue that the city shouldn’t pass up the opportunity to give Strong’s students a better place to learn and to build a partnership with SCSU. They also argue that the city shouldn’t pass up $35 million in state money — especially since, they argue, the city would have to end up spending around the same $10 million patching up the old Strong building anyway.
“The cost to the City and BOE [Board of Education] of maintaining this school at the current location will match or exceed the proposed investment for the new Building,” schools Superintendent of Schools Garth Harries wrote to alder leaders in a five-page letter detailing numerous arguments to support the new school. (Click here to read the letter.)
The letter details $6.4 million, not $10 million, worth of repairs needed at the current building, which opened in 1986:
• A $1 million new roof.
• $500,000 in “technology upgrades.”
• $1 million for “HVAC repairs/replacement.”
• $500,000 to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
• $1.5 million to replace the elevator.
• $250,000 to replace that playground.
• $350,000 to replace the parking lot.
• $500,000 for “window replacement/energy upgrades.”
• $1.6 million for a new security area as well as phones and furniture.
• $800,000 (“a conservative estimate”) for “abatement and remediation work.”
On top of those costs will come ongoing higher-than-usual costs to maintain an “aged structure,” Harries wrote. Added into the equation are the value of the land the new school would get for free at SCSU, as well as the possible sale of the Orchard-Legion lot.
As negotiators floated compromises late this week to seek support for the new school, Morrison, the board’s president pro tem, remained unmoved by the financial arguments.
“It seems like every time they want to build a new school they say, ‘If we don’t approve it now, we’ll lose the money.’ Then the next year they want to build another new school,” she said in an interview.
Morrison (pictured), a career social worker who represents Dixwell, rejected the argument that opposing the new school means not supporting kids: “I’m not saying that these children don’t need and don’t deserve a new school. This is about being fiscally responsible. We don’t have the $10.5 million needed in order to build a new school.”
She agreed that kids should have a nicer place to live — and said that officials should move Strong’s 429 students to other schools.
“I don’t know where we would put them,” responded Kim Johnsky, the Board of Ed’s director of instruction. She said enrollment increases each year in New Haven, with around 21,500 students in the system.
Morrison responded in turn that school officials have in the past found new spots for students in existing buildings.
“They’re creative when they want to be creative. They were creative when they decided there weren’t enough seventh and eighth-graders going to Lincoln-Bassett and they put those children elsewhere. Right now they have to let those creative juices be flowing and figure something out. … They have different swing spaces. Aren’t they in the process of renovating New Haven Academy, and isn’t that expected to be done soon? Isn’t that a swing space that can be available?”
Gloom And No Room
On a tour of the current school building this week, Principal DeNicola (pictured) spoke of the creativity she and her staff already employ every day to make the space work. Strong is one of four STEM (science, technology, engineering, math)-themed magnet schools. (Read about that here.)
With no more available storage space, the school converted half of a first-floor girls’ bathroom into a closet. That did mean closing off access to the bathroom for the multi-purpose gym/cafeteria/assembly hall. The staff constantly wrestles with overflows and poor ventilation in the bathrooms, DeNicola said.
“This was supposed to be a library,” DeNicola said of a room that largely serves as another storage area.
One part of a wall remains for books.
The room does have a carpeted reading space donated by celebrity surgeon (now Republican presidential candidate) Ben Carson.
And the school has a new “discovery lab” that has offered new learning opportunities for students like third-graders Tatianna Torres and Leslie Redfearn (pictured). Officials said the new SCSU campus building would feature expanded science facilities.
When it’s cold or rainy, and when lunch waves fill the gym, the school holds “gym” class in an atrium, which for safety reasons does greatly limit what activities can be held there. Also, the space is surrounded by classrooms, whose students enter and exit in the middle of the gym group.
A small side yard offered some play possibilities, but not with the holes in the fence. “We have kids with autism” and others who might wander out, DeNicola said.
The most glaring impression of the school that emerged during the tour was of smaller-bore nuisances that contribute to a gloomy, rundown atmosphere and apparently require continual maintenance. Like water stains from the leaking room …
… and missing ceiling panels, which pop up in classrooms…
… and hallways throughout the building.
“We’ve outgrown this building,” DeNicola said. The question for lawmakers Tuesday night is whether that means Strong needs a new building or should be dismantled, with students scattered throughout the system.