MAKING SPACE
Newfield gets creative after losing rooms to mold
“As more and more problems became known and issues of how much capital money was going to be devoted to the problem, the Newfield project ended up becoming a less urgent problem.”
Andy George, Board of Education president
STAMFORD — Newfield Elementary School, which sits on the quiet and leafy Pepper Ridge Road, will be down six classrooms next year due to budget cuts, leaving the school tight on space and parents frustrated.
“We all want to get back to where we have an art room and a media lab, but we’re not in normal times,” said city Director of Administration Mike Handler, explaining why nearly three million in funding for new construction at Newfield was nixed from the city’s 2019-20 capital budget.
Newfield acquired four portable classrooms 25 years ago and got another two five years after that. They were supposed to last five to seven years as a temporary addition, but soon became part of the permanent fabric of the school, said Newfield Principal Lisa Saba-Price.
But at the start of this school year, Newfield parents spoke out in mass about poor conditions in the portables.
“We decided we needed to start advocating for the health of our building,” said Reischea Kapasouris, a Newfield parent and member of the school’s Parent Faculty Organization.
Kapasouris said she could tell the portables were “falling apart” from the time she dropped hers son off for his first day of school in the modular classroom this year. Together with Newfield PFO Co-President Amy Muslim, Kapasouris founded the Newfield Parent Facilities Task Force to lead the charge for better conditions at the school.
They secured a victory on Oct. 5, when the Board of Education closed the portables and promised to clean both the portables and mold-related problems in the primary building by Oct. 31.
When the portables were first evacuated, Saba-Price said the thinking was the students — composed of five second-grade classes and an art room — could return once they were cleaned, but it soon became clear the portables were beyond repair and not worth “throwing good money after bad,” said Saba-Price.
The relocated students took over classrooms in the main building, displacing special education, media, and resource rooms to smaller and makeshift spaces and moving the art and music teachers onto carts.
A resource specialist now instructs students in what was formerly a storage room for math supplies that has no windows. Some tutoring is done at tables in the hallways.
A replacement of the portables appeared inevitable at first, and the city’s Planning Board designated $2.97 million in its 2019-20 recommended capital budget for portable replacement or construction of a new building at Newfield.
At the same time, however, another, broader force was brewing in the district that would eventually bring the capital funding for Newfield to zero by the time the Board of Representatives passed the $283 million 2019-20 school budget May 2.
With a combination of city and school officials, the Mold Task Force formed on Oct. 29 to address the crisis of mold found in the majority of Stamford public school buildings.
On Nov. 2 the Board of Education closed Westover Magnet Elementary School due to elevated mold counts and moved the school’s students to an office building on Elmcroft Road where they will remain until next year.
“As more and more problems became known and issues of how much capital money was going to be devoted to the problem, the Newfield project ended up becoming a less urgent problem,” said Board of Education President Andy George.
Upon the recommendation of the Mold Task Force, the Board of Finance authorized $50 million for a newly created capital-project account for six schools — Davenport, Hart, Toquam, Stark, Westhill and Westover.
“Like any big triage situation you have to address the most critical need first,” said Handler, a member of the Mold Task Force. “We don’t in good conscious support spending money to replace a portion or all six portables closed at Newfield until such time as we have a handle on the total needs of the district.”
The Mold Task Force will return to discussions about Newfield once the city has better cost estimates for the large projects, such as Westover, and an understanding of how much money is left over to spend elsewhere in the district, Handler added.
“We heard a lot about Newfield, but then you have to take a step back and assess the whole city, the whole school system, and weigh the needs against each other. Unfortunately, we don’t have infinite resources and we have to make some decisions,” Finance Board Chairman Richard Freedman said at a meeting in April before the finance board cut Newfield’s capital budget.
“The task force went through every school. These are the experts. They had contractors with them. In the task force’s assessment, whatever the situation is at Newfield is not worse than the schools that made the list,” Freedman said.
All along, at finance, Mold Task Force, and school board meetings, Newfield parents advocated to bring funds to the school and, despite the efforts, came up empty-handed.
“We have a city full of schools and infrastructure in general that is falling apart,” Muslim said, acknowledging the mold crisis is districtwide. Nonetheless, the Newfield PFO co-president said she still hoped the finance board would allocate funds to Newfield, saying, “it’s just not the environment you hope your kids are in to have a productive learning environment.”
Kapasouris said she has little faith in city officials that Newfield will receive attention once estimates for larger projects are in place, especially after years of deferred maintenance.
“As soon as someone can show me they really have a long-term plan of attack that addresses all of the schools I’ll have more confidence in them, but until then I don’t have confidence,” Kapasouris said. “We’re talking about school children and they should have the best facilities. Period. I don’t care what you want to invest in, but there is no greater investment nationwide than our kids’ schools.”