Town seeking proposals on plan to close school

North Smithfield school board moves forward with plan to shutter Halliwell Elementary

NORTH SMITHFIELD – The School Committee has taken the next step on Schools Superintendent Michael St. Jean’s proposed plan to decommission the Halliwell Memorial School and reconfigure grade levels - which hinges on permanent modular classrooms at the North Smithfield Elementary School - by seeking out architects and consultants to design a formal proposal.

The School Department is inviting architectural and engineering firms to submit proposals to draft a feasibility study on the modular classrooms; cost estimates for those classrooms as well as the decommissioning of the Halliwell School; and site plans if the site feasibility and cost estimates are within budget.

Bids are due by 2 p.m. on March 8 and will be reviewed by the School Building Committee that night.

In a separate request for proposals, the School Department Committee is seeking a professional educational and facilities planning firm to develop a comprehensive pre-K through Grade 12 master plan for teaching and learning. The plan would include a “road map” that supports the transition to a teaching and learning model that includes implementation strategies and evaluation of priorities.

Bid proposals for that are also due March 8.

St. Jean’s plan is to close the Halliwell Elementary School with the help of g $4.3 million in bonding for school building improvements voted by local residents. The plan includes proposed building improvements and grade shifts that would allow for Halliwell’s grades to be assigned to the existing middle school and North Smithfield Elementary School buildings and also related scheduling changes that would allow the high school and middle school to better coordinate programs to facilitate the grade shifts.

The plan to close Halliwell includes a proposal to add six modular classrooms at North Smithfield Elementary School that would provide over 6,000-square-feet of space at the primary elementary school under improvements that would also address landscape issues believed to contribute to poor drainage at the school grounds. Replacement of the North Smithfield Elementary School roof is another component in the plan and will improve the school environment and address longstanding mold and mildew concerns at the elementary school.

The new modular classrooms with state-of-the-art ventilation, lighting and power efficiency designs

would be located on a piling foundation arrangement keeping them up off the ground and as a result would avoid any of the high water table impacts the North Smithfield Elementary School building has dealt with over the years, according to St. Jean.

The new classrooms would be arranged in a wing format with links to the interior of the North Smithfield Elementary School building as well as protected outside walkways.

The advantages are that the buildings have the same reliability as a traditional classroom structure but can be built quickly.

The changes would create a grade 5 to grade 8 program at the middle school, a school make up used by a number of other districts in the state. The school would operate two teams for students, one for grades 5 and 6 and the other for grades 7 and 8.