UP TO CODE
Schools move to bring elementary buildings into ADA compliance
— After Julian Curtiss School Principal Trish McGuire had a surgical procedure, she could not go up the stairs of her school to visit classrooms, or conduct evaluations.
Once, a third-grader had hip surgery and the whole class had to be moved to the first floor to accommodate the student’s temporary disability.
Such accommodations are rare. But Julian Curtiss, built in 1946, is in need of renovations and expansion. The school is one of three in the public school district, along with Riverside and Old Greenwich, that, in the course of renovation, will be brought up to code for Americans with Disabilities Act accessibility.
“Almost everyone is disabled at some point,” said KG&D Architect Russ DaGREENWICH vidson. “It’s a lot more than ramps for wheelchairs.”
Buildings built before the 1990 accessibility law only need to match building codes from the era in which they were constructed.
That changes once new construction on a building begins. “Once you start a significant renovation, you’re no longer grandfathered in — you have to be
ADA compliant,” said Davidson, the lead architect who helped the school board draft a 15-year master facilities plan that assessed each school building and needed renovations.
One of the biggest barriers to accessibility in multifloor buildings is the lack of an elevator, without which schools have to relocate classrooms for temporarily disabled students.
Old Greenwich School Principal Jen Bencivengo said her school has not had complaints about inaccessibility since she came to the school, but this year and last, she has had to make accommodations for injured students.
Last year, two students were injured and required a wheelchair, she said. Luckily, the bulk of their classes were held on the ground floor and they could only not reach the media center or nurse. The nurse came to each child as needed.
This year, an older child, who had class on the third floor, was injured and could not access the room. The school created a new classroom on the first floor and had portions of the student’s day held there, with additional teachers and some peers until the child could access the third floor on crutches.
“(It is) certainly not ideal, but we made it work, and it was relatively seamless overall,” Bencivengo said.
The town budget for the 201920 fiscal year includes a design study for Julian Curtiss. During that study, engineering firms will examine the building and draw up plans for renovation, which will have to include bringing it up to code so that it complies with ADA.
The Board of Education initially approved a budget request for $563,667 to fund design studies for three schools: $163,000 for Julian Curtiss, $170,662 for Old Greenwich and $230,000 for Riverside. Carrying out the studies simultaneously would have saved the town $170,000 during the design phase.
The Board of Estimate and Taxation unbundled the package and only approved money for Julian Curtiss. Members then voted to increase the money for Julian Curtiss to $212,000.
This vote did not modify the BOE’s proposed timetable to address ADA and other deficiencies in the school facilities, BET Budget Committee Chair Leslie Moriarty said in an email.
The Budget Committee voted to fund the Julian Curtiss feasibility study because the school has the earliest construction date, which Moriarty said continues the committee’s traditional method of funding school projects.
“This process allows for the inclusion of the most current data when performing the feasibility study and developing the detailed educational specifications that drive the construction project,” she said.
Old Greenwich and Riverside are farther back in the 15-year plan, and thus the Budget Committee expects to fund those studies in the year prior to the start of the detailed design phase, fiscal year 2021 and 2023, respectively, she said.
The Julian Curtiss study will give the school board a better level of confidence in what needs to be done, and what the budget would look like, Davidson said. From design study through implementation could take up to four years, and cost about $31,282,376, Davidson estimated.
When the school was built, it had no cafeteria because students walked home for lunch. The library was too small, so a handful of classrooms have been converted into a library, and a large classroom — a music room — has become the cafeteria.
Julian Curtiss is shaped like a lopsided ‘U.’ Davidson proposed a renovation that would pick up where the 1952 expansion left off, extending one side of the building so that the two ends of the ‘U’ would be the same length. Then, an indoor corridor would connect the two ends of the ‘U,’ creating more classrooms, forming an enclosed courtyard and building up an indoor corridor that would include an elevator.