Hamden BOE Eyes Scaled-Back Construction Goals

Well aware of Hamden’s fiscal stress, school board officials are planning to approve a new five-year plan for school maintenance projects throughout the district with significantly scaled-back construction projects.

At a Board of Education (BOE) meeting Tuesday evening, district administrators presented a new five-year capital plan for the district. Though still just a draft, the plan outlines a new direction for the town’s long-anticipated, and hotly debated, construction plans.

It includes a total of $27.3 million in anticipated maintenance, renovation, and minor construction costs over the next five years, of which the state may cover $8.9 million.

The plan includes some of the projects the district had planned to carry out as a part of a planned district restructuring program, but scales them back significantly.

At the end of 2018, the Hamden BOE passed a districtwide restructuring plan called the 3R Initiative. The plan was supposed to address declining enrollment, increasing costs, and racial imbalances between elementary schools. The initiative included moving sixth graders to the middle school, closing the Church Street and Shepherd Glen Schools, incorporating the Wintergreen School into the district, bringing universal pre‑K to the district, creating intra-district magnet schools, and redistricting.

In June, 2019, the Legislative Council approved $29.8 million in bonding for the program, of which the state was supposed to reimburse about $20 million. The council had previously authorized a $26 million reconstruction of the West Woods School, of which the state was supposed to reimburse about $15 million, though the town had not yet issued bonds for the project.

In total, the town was looking at about $21 million in renovation and construction costs that it would have to cover over the next few years. If assumptions held, the state would kick in another $35 million to cover the total costs.

Since, then, though, the town’s fiscal woes have deepened, and plans have fallen through. In November, the state pulled its funding for the West Woods project, forcing the board to find another way to make much-needed renovations to the existing school.

As the council created its fiscal year 2021 budget this spring, and dealt with the financial fallout of the pandemic, council members started rumbling about walking back the 3R Initiative.

The capital plan the board now has on its desk would walk back the projects it had originally planned, but would also cover other necessary maintenance costs not covered by the 3R Initiative.

Originally, the 3R project was supposed to include major renovations at the Ridge Hill and Dunbar Hill Schools, an addition to the middle school, and smaller additions and renovations to a few other schools in the district to accommodate additional pre‑K classrooms. The council did not approve the Dunbar Hill project, but it approved the rest.

The middle school project is going forward. At the end of September, the state legislature approved $7.5 million in bonding for the middle school. The new wing is projected to cost $11.2 million, leaving about $3.7 million for the town to cover. The town issued bonds for the project in August.

The board has scaled back other parts of the project, though. The Ridge Hill School renovation will no longer happen, nor will the planned renovations at the Wintergreen and Church Street Schools, beyond what is necessary to maintain them in good shape.

Chief Operating Officer Tom Ariola said the new plan includes all the anticipated maintenance costs for the next five years. The old 3R plan aimed to maximize state reimbursement dollars by concentrating on a few major projects. The new plan would spread costs out throughout the district to cover all of the repairs that are coming down the line.

Much of the original 3R project will continue. Sixth graders will still move to the middle school, the district will instate universal pre‑K, the Church Street and Shepherd Glen schools will close, and the district will undergo redistricting.

But the board has abandoned the intra-district magnet school plan that it originally used to sell the plan to the council. The magnet schools were supposed to take an innovative approach to solving the racial imbalances in the district’s schools, and give families more choice in schools in the district. When the board originally pitched the project to the council, Superintendent Jody Goeler said he had gotten very positive feedback from the state about the town’s magnet school plan. He said state officials saw the system as a potential model for other towns in Connecticut.

The district did not bind itself to the magnet approach, however. Now, with pressure from the council to cut costs, the board has struck that aspect of the plan.

“A lot of things came up and it really took the winds out of the system,” BOE operations committee chair Chris Daur said of the magnet plans. It would have required renovations at certain schools to accommodate specific magnet themes. It also would have entailed increased ongoing costs. Daur said the board underestimated the ongoing costs of operating themed magnet schools.

The magnet school portion of the 3R Initiative was never essential to achieving the district’s goals, he said. The most important aspects of the program are intact: pre‑K, moving sixth graders to the middle school, and downsizing the number of schools in the district. The elimination of the magnet schools will require a more traditional approach to redistricting though, which the town must do to come into compliance with the state’s racial balancing laws.

Roofs, Windows, And HVACs

The new capital plan that Ariola presented to the board Tuesday includes a total of $27.3 million of fixes over five years. Of that, the state would pay $8.9 million if all goes according to plan, and the town $18.4 million.

That spending includes many of the aspects of the 3R program as it was planned. It includes about $1.1 million to make additions to the Ridge Hill and West Woods schools to accommodate pre‑K classrooms there. It includes fixes at the Ridge Hill School that would have happened as a part of the complete renovation.

When the board crafted the 3R Initiative and planned the building projects it would require, many of the decisions about which schools would be renovated involved a dance that balanced the district’s renovation needs with how best to present the plan to the state to maximize state funding. Since the town was planning construction and major renovation projects, the board applied to get its building projects on the state’s ​“priority list.” In order to make it onto the list, the board’s projects had to be construction projects or major renovations. Getting priority-list funding would allow the town to undertake major projects with the state covering about two thirds of the cost.

The state approved priority-list funding for the middle school, and for a renovation at the Alice Peck School. It did not approve funding for the Ridge Hill School renovation, saying the town was not ready and could try again the next year.

As time went on, it became clear to district administrators that it would be prudent to scale the projects back because of cost concerns, said Ariola. Though priority-list funding would have allowed the town to completely renovate Ridge Hill with a high level of reimbursement, the 3R Initiative did not take into account the other maintenance costs throughout the district.

With the new plan, Ariola said he has tried to include all of the anticipated costs and arranged them in a way that would maximize state aid. Rather than focus funding on a few projects, the new plan would spread it out throughout the town to cover costs that will crop up, and that were not covered by the 3Rs. The projects originally planned in the 3R initiative have been scaled back by over $10 million.

The town will likely no longer seek priority-list funding, since most of the projects in the capital plan are not eligible. Instead, it will pursue ​“non-priority-list” funding, which does not mean the projects are not priorities. Rather, they are more limited in scope and funding is administered in a different way.

Non-priority-list grants can cover roof repairs, window repairs, and security upgrades. They also provide more flexibility in timing, because the town can apply for them once a month, rather than once a year. They have the same reimbursement rate as priority-list projects: about 67 percent in Hamden’s case.

The only part of the new capital plan that is eligible for a priority-list grant is the addition of pre‑K classrooms. Ariola said that if the district wants to open those classrooms by the fall of 2022, when the middle school addition is supposed to be complete, it will not have time to apply. Unless the district can wait another year for the pre‑K classrooms, it will have to bear that cost on its own.

The most expensive part of the new capital plan are roof repairs. In total, it includes $7.1 million of repairs in the next five years at four schools, of which the state would cover $4.8 million. In some cases, those repairs are urgent.

The roof at the West Woods School was built in 1973, and is well past the point at which it should have been replaced. The building has experienced significant water damage from leaks in the roof. That replacement is the district’s first priority, and will cost $2.6 million in total with the state picking up 67 percent. Daur said that work will have to happen over the next summer, when students are out of the building.

The Dunbar Hill roof is next, at $1.6 million. Helen Street and Bear Path are also on the docket for the next five years.

The next-largest chunk of the plan would pay for technology. Anticipated costs would total $5.5 million over the next five years, which the town would have to pay on its own. Those costs would cover new Chromebooks, iPads, and other teaching tools.

The plan also includes $4.1 million for security upgrades, of which the state would cover $2.8 million, and $1.8 million for window repairs, of which the state would cover $1.2 million.

HVAC repairs would total $3.2 million. Unfortunately, those costs are not reimbursable.

The board has not yet passed the capital plan. Once it discusses it again and approves it, board members and district administrators will have to convince the council to provide the funding.

“We’re now asking the council to put that money toward long-term fiscal stability in our schools,” said Daur.