NSES addition work begins soon
NORTH SMITHFIELD – There is still plenty of snow in the way at the moment, but School Supt. Michael St. Jean promises the start of work on the school department’s facilities improvement project is just around the corner.
In fact, St. Jean said on Thursday that excavation work on a 5,000-square-foot, four-classroom addition at the North Smithfield Elementary School (NSES) included in the town’s $4.3 million school improvement project, should begin in about three weeks.
“I believe in about two weeks a construction trailer will be delivered over at NSES and groundbreaking and construction start in about three weeks,” St. Jean said.
The work will represent the actual start of construction of an improvement project that has been discussed and debated in the town for several years, and finally gained the remaining local approvals to proceed in January of 2018.
The addition to North Smithfield Elementary will allow the long-sought closing of the deteriorated Halliwell Elementary School for the coming school year, if all goes well with its construction schedule.
St. Jean said the addition’s contractor, Gilbane Construction, has a current completion date of Aug. 15 for the project that would allow the
move of related classes be- fore the start of school.
Fourth-grade classes now at Halliwell on Victory Highway will be moved to NSES on Providence Pike, as part of the project, and Halliwell’s fifth-grade classes relocated to the North Smithfield Middle School next to the high school on Greenville Road.
The Halliwell School is not expected to be used by the school department after the move but its reuse options have yet to be decided.
The improvement project, to be completed with funding from the town’s $12 million facilities bond and related state aid, also includes a plan for adding two modern science labs and renovating three existing labs at the high school. St. Jean said the approximate $2.7 million science lab project is in the final stage of design approval and should be ready to go out to construction bidding this spring with the actual construction being carried out over the summer.
Once the science labs are completed and the school department’s state aid for that work set, St. Jean said planning for the next phase, improvements to the high school’s athletic locker rooms will begin.
The department will be using state aid reimbursements from the prior improvement work to help fund the locker room work, he noted.
The high school lab project is eligible for 30 to 45 percent in state aid reimbursement and St. Jean said he hopes to be able to add an additional 5 percent in state aid for science instruction improvement on top of that.
“The whole project is set up not to exceed our bonding but we are continually trying to drive costs down,” St. Jean noted.
As for the upcoming start of construction at NSES, St. Jean said he is looking forward to it. “I am pleased. We will be closing Halliwell this summer and I fully expect this addition to be built in time,” he said.
Town Administrator Gary Ezovski said on Thursday that he also sees the start of work in three weeks as a significant step forward for the school improvement project given its construction schedule.
“We are looking to get it done before the start of school next year and we need to allow the staff time to move into their new rooms,” Ezovski said. “So the completion date of mid-August becomes very important,” he said.
Ezovski reported that work is already underway on another phase of the town’s facilities bond projects, the renovation of the former Kendall-Dean School into the new Town Hall.
“The Kendall-Dean demolition work has been under- way for sometime,” Ezovski said while noting contractors have been removing asbestos from the old school and completing its remediation along with interior structural changes. The school is also being prepared for the renovation work creating new town office spaces in the building, which is also expected to be completed by fall. The Town Hall renovation is being conducted with $3.2 million of the improvement bond funding, and Ezovski said planned improvement work at the current Municipal Annex to allow expanded use by the police department would follow. Ezovski said the scope of that project will depend on the funding remaining from the Town Hall project and remains at a design stage.
Before moving ahead with that project, Ezovski said the town should determine what can actually be completed with such work and whether it is fiscally justified and suited to the department’s needs.
“I would want to make sure that the plan gives our police officers a facility where they can work and also be respected,” he said.