Science Kits Stuck In Storage

Elementary school teachers had to skip most science experiments planned so far this year — an unforeseen consequence of budget pressures that led the district to consolidate its buildings.

Richard Therrien, the district’s science curriculum supervisor, explained that down side of downsizing to the Board of Education’s Finance & Operations Committee at its Tuesday evening meeting at the district’s Meadow Street headquarters.

After the Board of Education voted to move out of nearly all of its leased space last spring, close to 1,100 science kits have been stuck in storage, Therrien said. They’re boxed up in classrooms at the former New Light School at 21 Wooster Place. The rooms are too small for staffers to actually unpack the kits from their large plastic tubs, he said.

At Tuesday’s meeting, Michael Pinto, the district’s chief operating officer, proposed moving the kits over to the gym at 130 Orchard St., the former Strong School site that was vacated last month when students moved into the brand-new Barack H. Obama Magnet University School, for at least the next three years.

“Our students need the kits to learn science,” Therrien said. ​“I need the space.”

The science kits, which are shared by schools, include all the materials that teachers need to set up a hands-on experiment about twice a week. The lessons cover weather patterns, rocks and minerals, plant growth, butterfly life cycles, sound waves and electric circuits, along with other subjects. Three times a year, the science resource center staff replaces whatever supplies have been used up and the kits are rotated among schools, sometimes even across town lines.

Pinto also suggested putting early childhood staff in the former Strong School space lobby, truancy officers in the nurses’ office, archived student records and building blueprints in the classrooms and a commercial kitchen in the cafeteria.

Board members objected, saying they felt they were being rushed into another move. They vetoed most of that plan, saying they didn’t want to permanently alter Strong School’s layout without knowing if the district would need more classroom space.

The board members voted to let the administration haul the science kits over to Orchard Street, but they said that should only be temporary until June 30. They said that the administration needs to come back by April with ​“a more comprehensive plan” for how to make use of all the district’s vacant property.

For more than a decade, the science kits were kept at 80 Hamilton St., a 22,000-square-foot space that was also used for pre-school registration and truancy call-ins. When the school budget veered into the red in 2018, district administrators said they couldn’t afford to keep paying the $169,000 in annual rent.

The boxes were shipped over to 103 Hallock Ave., the former New Horizons site, where there was plenty of space to unbox them in the gymnasium.

To cover part of the costs, Therrien set up a partnership with Hamden and North Branford, allowing them to rent about 380 kits for $157 each. He wrote in a memo to the Finance & Operations Committee that the deal brought in nearly $60,000 to cover about a third of the district’s expenses. Therrien added that renting the kits from an outside provider would probably cost about $350 each, about twice as much.

Another round of cost-cutting last year brought an alternative high school back to the Hallock Avenue space, landing the kits in their current location on Wooster Place, where they’ve been stuck every since.

“That’s a fine building but there’s no open space for shelves, for refurbishing the kits,” Therrien said. North Branford has pretty much ​“given up” on the partnership, and the staff who ran it all had to quit because they couldn’t work, he added.

Therrien said that the kits have to be inventoried and refurbished before they get sent out to each school, which he said staffers can’t do in that cramped space. 

Teachers have been asking about the hold-up since last fall, including during the public comment at a late October board meeting. Interim Superintendent Iline Tracey said at the time that administrators were aware of the problem and working to fix it.

At Tuesday’s committee meeting, Pinto said that the emptying out of the Orchard Street school gave the district ​“this extra breathing room,” especially to house the science kits.

“It allows us the time and space to start working through what the district footprint needs to look like overall,” he said. ​“How do we reuse — or if necessary, dispose — of those buildings that are surplus? This gives us leeway to start looking and evaluating.”

But once he started talking about all the other possible uses for the space, including a city partnership with CitySeed for a food incubator in the cafeteria, board members said he was getting ahead of himself.

Matt Wilcox, a board member who opposed moving Riverside out of its rented space on Ella T. Grasso Boulevard until it settled on a permanent location, said that he wants to keep the board’s options open.

“The primary issue I have from this plan is it takes a building that, up to four weeks ago, was a school that was adequate for classes and turns it into storage and some office space,” Wilcox said. ​“The idea of tying it up for non-instructional use for the next three years, I have a larger issue with that.”

Darnell Goldson, the school board’s president, added that he wanted to understand the district’s overall plan for facilities before approving any moves.

“What is really concerning to me is that lack of planning,” Goldson said. ​“It should be a much more comprehensive plan that talks about all of our needs and the spaces we have available. To come to use with this plan to use [Strong] primarily for storage and some activity that the city wants is kinda backwards.”

Wilcox suggested that the district should be able to go ahead with ​“non-destructive use” of the space. Board members ultimately narrowed that, allowing just the science kits in for the next six months.