BRUNSWICK

Brunswick likely won’t get another elementary school for at least eight years, according to school officials. In the meantime, the school board is grappling with how to get support for funding for its aging — and in one instance, vacant — schools.

The school board on Wednesday appeared to lament its inability to come to a consensus with how to renovate and repair its current schools, or plan for a new school.

Students at Coffin School still attend classes in decades-old modular units and play on aging playground equipment.

The adjacent junior high school has “been in desperate need of attention for at least 20 years,” according to school board member Janet Connors.

Both schools have life safety systems in need of replacement, according to Facilities Director Paul Caron.

Caron said $1 million a year needs to be budgeted for life safety systems and other repairs, including sprinkler systems.

Caron also recommended budgeting $500,000 a year to maintain the nearly 20-year-old Brunswick High School and the newly built Harriet Beecher Stowe School.

Finally, Caron wants to budget for a $1 million “nest egg” so that the district can be “better prepared to address the future needs of building a new school.”

Meanwhile, the district must decide whether to renovate or raze the defunct Jordan Acres elementary school that the school board closed in June 2012 after a rafter split during the previous winter.

Portland Design Team estimated it would cost $4 million to reopen the school, and the district would have to pay $772,623 more for additional staff.

According to Superintendent Paul Perzanoski, it would be two years until the state calls for applications for building funding, and it would be at least eight years before any new school opened. If Brunswick wasn’t selected in the first round of state applications, Perzanoski said, a new school may not open until at least 2024, at which point the district’s current kindergarten would be in high school.

Perzanoski said the district has not seen an outpouring of support to build a new school with local funds.

Cost estimates for a new elementary school have risen to more than $26 million.

On Wednesday, board members batted around a dozen options for renovating, repairing or replacing Jordan Acres, Coffin and junior high schools. For example, the district could make repairs only to the junior high to extend its life 10 years for about $3 million. On the other hand, a new junior high school could be constructed for $28 million that would last 40 years.

The district’s facilities committee will take up the matters at its next meeting.

Board member Rich Ellis noted that the community would not support funding a long-term plan to the district’s facility woes “unless we coalesce around a fine, detailed plan.”

The district has been formulating its facilities master plan since 2011. After years of debate over the future of school facilities, school board member Brenda

Clough said she no longer supported in-district funding for a new elementary school if the district wants to renovate and repair Coffin and the junior high.

“We’ve been at this process for far too many years,” said Clough. “I find it sad we cannot get together on any agreement.

“We are setting ourselves up for a whole new set of criticisms in the community,” Clough continued. “We have wasted time and put ourselves into a situation where we cannot escape. … I think we’re in a sad state of affairs.”

jswinconeck@timesrecord.com

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