Norwich school plan came to sudden end

Panel that led $144.5M effort will be disbanded

“I am sad. I wish there was a way. I don't know what we can do different. What do we want? That's the question. We keep kicking this can and everybody says we want better, we want better, and I'm sorry, I don't know how to do it any other way. Either way, it's going to cost some money.” AARON DANIELS NORWICH SCHOOL BOARD CHAIRMAN

Norwich — Last week’s surprise tie vote by the Board of Education to reject a $144.5 million plan to consolidate and restructure schools killed a two-year effort aimed at upgrading buildings and cutting costs on aging facilities.

The 4-4 vote rejected the proposal to consolidate elementary schools into four completely renovated buildings, structured by grade level rather than geography, and to keep the recently renovated Kelly Middle School for grades seven and eight. The plan was expected to cost city taxpayers $57.6 million if existing state reimbursement formulas remained intact.

The recommendation, written by the consulting team of JCJ Architecture, LEARN and O&G Industries, was expected to be presented to voters in a November 2017 referendum if approved by the Board of Education and City Council. The school and city budgets jointly funded the $114,593 consultants’ fee.

City Corporation Counsel Michael Driscoll said the tie vote ended the effort of the School Facilities Review Committee, which had endorsed the plan last fall.

With that advice, Mayor Deberey Hinchey, a member of the review committee, said she will ask the City Council on Feb. 6 to formally disband the committee, which was meant to foster cooperation between city and school officials to restructure the schools. The committee has members from the school board, City Council and city and school staff.

“The vote was taken,” Hinchey said. “The school board voted, and the project failed to get ratification

by the board. That puts an end to the project right now. If the Board of Education isn’t going to support it, then our work is done.”

After the tie vote, school board Chairman Aaron “Al” Daniels, a member of the review committee, said he had hoped to try for a new vote at a future meeting. And Vice Chairman Dennis Slopak, chairman of the review committee, who voted against the proposal Tuesday, hoped the vote would allow him to revive a plan rejected last fall for a giant, single school campus.

“I am sad,” Daniels said after learning of Driscoll’s legal opinion. “I wish there was a way. I don’t know what we can do different. What do we want? That’s the question. We keep kicking this can and everybody says we want better, we want better, and I’m sorry, I don’t know how to do it any other way. Either way, it’s going to cost some money. No matter what, it’s going to cost some money.”

Slopak, however, said he is not ready to give up on promoting the single-campus alternative and hopes to lobby for that plan in coming weeks.

School board members who voted against the plan cited the high cost and doubt that tax-strapped city voters would support it. They also questioned whether the favorable state reimbursement rate for Norwich would remain intact, given the state’s own perennial budget crises.

Repeatedly in recent years, the city school system has faced budget cuts ordered by the city manager or City Council that have resulted in layoffs, salary concessions, furlough days and the last-minute closing of school buildings.

In 2010, a budget freeze led to the closing of the beloved Greeneville elementary school, the Bishop elementary school and the William A. Buckingham School, which at the time housed adult education. That year, the total school budget was $62.5 million. Bishop became a preschool center, while the Greeneville and Buckingham schools were torn down by the city.

Education costs continued to rise, and five years later, faced with a $1.8 million cut to a total budget of $74 million, the school board converted Teachers’ Memorial Middle School into a sixth-grade academy. All seventh- and eighth-graders were shifted to Kelly Middle School.

Both upheavals were conceived in the throes of spring budget debates, without advance planning. Administrators, staff, parents and students scrambled to adjust to the changes. Protests and packed public hearings failed to sway city leaders.

The new School Facilities Review Committee was supposed to change that scenario and bring advanced planning to consolidation, along with economic development for vacated school buildings. School board and former review committee member Angelo Yeitz, however, said last week that city leaders had not enthusiastically embraced the joint effort.

Yeitz voted against the recommendation, calling it too costly for the city’s current fiscal climate.

Hinchey disagreed that city officials were not engaged in the effort. She said it just wasn’t yet time for city staff to devote time and effort to marketing buildings before decisions were made on whether or which buildings would be vacated.

“For a city staff to really study those buildings, how to transform them, sell them or demolish them, we would need to know whether the project could go forward,” Hinchey said. “The city was very interested in exploring this project.”

Superintendent Abby Dolliver lobbied during discussion last Tuesday for approval of the plan. She called it a “place holder” to allow the plan to be brought to voters for a full discussion of “what do you want our schools to look like.” Dolliver was disappointed but said the report’s information on upgrades needed to the various buildings still can be used in the future.

Norwich now has seven elementary schools; two preschools; the sixth-grade academy, which also houses an elementary special education school; a high school transition special education school; adult education and central administration offices located in the former John Mason School. All but the recently renovated Kelly Middle School need upgrades.

Former Alderman Mark Bettencourt, who had spearheaded creation of the facilities review committee and served as its chairman in 2015, said he, too, was disappointed in the school board vote and had hoped the effort would signal long-term change in how the city works with the schools.

“I would prefer some forward thinking plan that takes in the needs of the city and the school system,” Bettencourt said. “I didn’t agree with the entire proposed plan, but I would rather the city had gone forward and put something to the voters, out of fear that we will have to take half measures in the future instead of a full plan. Let’s face it, some of the buildings are pretty old and antiquated.”