Norwich board to hear school plan
Proposal is reworked version of project rejected by city council in 2017
Norwich — A proposal to consolidate and renovate city schools could take a first step forward Tuesday, as the City Council hears a presentation and considers creating an official school building committee to formalize the plan.
The proposal, which does not yet have a price tag, is a reworked version of a $147 million plan rejected by the City Council in May 2017. The committee approved the new plan last summer by the School Facilities Review Committee. The committee will give a presentation to the City Council at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Council Chambers in an informational meeting prior to the regular City Council meeting.
Resolutions on the council agenda would dissolve the review committee and create a formal school building committee, with places left blank for appointed members and ex-officio members. At least one member must have construction experience, and school board and council members could be appointed.
Mayor Peter Nystrom, a co-sponsor of the resolutions along with Council President Pro Tempore Mark Bettencourt and Alderman William Nash, said the city will seek applicants through the usual process for boards and commissions. Applications will be posted on the city’s website, www. norwichct.org. Nystrom hopes the council can appoint the building committee at its Feb. 18 meeting.
Nystrom said ex-officio members could include school Superintendent Kristen Stringfellow, School Business Administrator Athena Nagel, City Manager John Salomone and city Comptroller Josh Pothier.
The full committee report is posted with Tuesday’s council agenda on the city website.
The committee proposed renovating as new the John B. Stanton, John Moriarty and Uncas elementary schools to house preschool through fifth grades, and building a fourth new elementary school, all to house preschool through fifthgrade students. The proposed new school building should be built to accommodate 300 to 600 students, the panel said. No specific site was identified for the new school.
Teachers’ Memorial Middle School would be renovated as new for sixth through eighth grades, while the recently renovated Kelly Middle School would remain as-is, also for sixth through eighth grades.
The two current preschool centers, Bishop and Deborah Tenant-Zinewicz schools, would be closed and listed for sale. School administrative departments now housed at Bishop and school central offices would move to the Samuel Huntington School, which also would house the Norwich Transition Academy, a vocational program for special education students aged 18 to 21.
The Thomas Mahan elementary school would be closed and listed for sale. The building, located off Route 82 in the city’s prime commercial district, is considered valuable for commercial development.
The central office building, the 1895 former John Mason School at the Norwichtown Green and the Hickory Street School, which now houses the Norwich Transition Academy, would be listed for sale.
Wequonnoc School in Taftville would close as an elementary school and its arts and technology magnet program moved to the renovated Moriarty environmental magnet school. Wequonnoc, with some capital improvements, would house Adult Education.
The status of the Veterans’ elementary school remains in question in the proposal.
Nystrom made creation of a school building committee a priority during his State of the City address on Jan. 6, and said the city needs a sense of urgency to ensure it gets on the state list of school construction projects for reimbursement as soon as possible. That process takes two years.
“The concern I have is the urgency,” Nystrom said Friday. “We’re not going to drag this out. Ideally, you have to give the state two years notice and the city’s reimbursement rate, last I learned, is 77%. You want to lock that in. The work needs to be done extremely thoughtfully and deliberatively and there’s a certain amount of timing. You don’t want to lose that opportunity.”
Bettencourt, who chaired the School Facilities Review Committee, said the building committee has a “long, complicated process” ahead of it and must be objective when finalizing a consolidation plan.
“It really has to be borne out by what information we can develop in order to make the best possible decision,” Bettencourt said, “Because you like one place more than another, it can’t be that. It has to be based on where we can expand, where we can build.”