Getting Stamford school buildings back up to par

As a longtime resident of Stamford the issue of substandard school structures is not new.

Many of us recall the multi-year remediation done at Stamford High School and recently the ongoing challenges of finishing the gut rehab of Westover School.

However, our future extends to essentially redo or replace 5-6 buildings, the most ambitious of which is Westhill High School. Let’s join the dots on what needs to make that happen and start a dialog for the taxpayer.

⏩ The city bonds (in round numbers) $50 million a year.

⏩The cost for a new Westhill building is reported to be $250 million. We read that the state would reimburse $50 million (20 percent). How would the remained fit with our annual bonding capacity even if spread over a few years?

⏩Norwalk is building a new high school — 328,000 square feet for 2,000 students over a phased 46-month period. The budget is $189 million with a $151 million (80 percent) state reimbursement. For what seems a similar facility why is Stamford projecting 33 percent higher cost?

⏩Harry Rilling, mayor of Norwalk, has limited Hartford legislative experience, yet Norwalk obtained an 80 percent reimbursement. Why not Stamford? Yes, Norwalk submitted a more expansive student body demographic — why didn’t Stamford do that is puzzling.

⏩Stamford Mayor Caroline Simmons’s platform emphasized her Hartford connections as a four- term legislator. Would it be too much to expect that she can lead our sleepy delegation to obtain the 80 percent reimbursement as well as scale back our project to more Norwalk-like numbers? I don’t believe this can be left to the school board to accomplish alone.

⏩What about the other schools needing attention? For conversation purposes, that could be another $250 million.

⏩Stamford could possibly bond $20 million/ year over each of five years (20 percent of $500 million) and perhaps stretch the remaining bonding to $40 million/year for other non-school projects. That requires that we obtain state funding for the remaining $400 million.

⏩Now is the time to get state and federal infrastructure commitments before those funds are committed elsewhere.

Can there be a higher priority than getting our school facilities up to modern standards? I invite the Board of Representatives, our state legislators, school and finance boards under the mayor’s leadership to come together and plan our school system’s future. Waiting another year won’t make the schools any better.

Why not act now?