Saco School Superintedent Jeremy Ray Courtesy Photo/Maureen Grandmaison Photography
SACO — Site selection, program and building committees involved in the process of presenting options on new elementary school construction in Saco are looking at three potential options.
Superintendent Jeremy Ray said the Department of Education’s school construction program is prepared to pay for most costs of one new school building, but is not prepared to pay for one large “mega school” with about 1,400 students from Pre-Kindergarten through grade five.
But, he said, the DOE is prepared to “stretch a bit,” provided the city finances a second school building.
Doing so would mean Saco public schools would be comprised of two elementary schools, and Saco Middle School. In two of the three options, the PreK building in the industrial park, and the three current elementary schools would close. The third option sees the state school construction fund build one school, and Saco would build a second school at some unknown time in the future.
On July 20, at the School Board’s 5 p.m. meeting at Saco City Hall, Ray said there will be a presentation about property owned by Sweetser, which emerged at a May forum as the preferred location in a vote of 30-1 of those in the public attending, and the site selection committee has recommended further study. The Sweetser land is one of three parcels considered after reviews of possible 27 parcels — the two others are at Saco Middle School, and the Clair properties on U.S. Route 1.
As well on July 20, there will be an outline of the school construction process going forward, and information on what the state DOE’s construction fund will pay for and what it will not fund.
Sometime this fall, Ray said, there will be a public meeting with a straw vote on the location and on the grade make-up of the proposed two buildings. The State Board of Education would then take a vote. Ray said the committees are looking to a June 2023 public vote at the polls.
If the Sweetser site is approved, he said, the schools would be located back off the roadway, situated similarly to Biddeford’s primary, intermediate and middle schools on Hill Street, which is also an industrial park area.
“There would be a straight connection to the city’s Public Works Department,” said Ray of the Sweetser property. The school buses are located on the Public Works property and are refueled there, and he noted Public Works personnel plow the community’s school lots.
The Saco Middle School location would mean building on a property that has a federal conservation easement, Ray pointed out, and he said the site would be where trails created by students as part of their education are situated. Constructing new buildings there would mean the loss of the trails already created and the inability to create new ones, he said.
State DOE guidelines require that schools funded under the construction program have at least 20 acres, plus one additional acre for every 100 students, which adds up to about 34 acres.
While families and others may find a walkable location more appealing, Ray and Assistant Superintendent Margaret Parkhurst noted available parcels of the required acreage are hard to come by.
“There is no perfect site, but we are confident that this is the best choice, based on what is available,” said Parkhurst.
As to the buildings, Option One includes a Pre-Kindergarten through grade one school for about 579 students and another building for grades two through five for 804 students. The state would provide $58 million with the city’s share at $5 million for one building; the city would pay $40-$45 million for the second building. That scenario would see the closure of Burns, Fairfield, and Young schools, and the Pre-K facility in the industrial park. A concern with that option is the enrollment for a PreK through grade one facility at nearly 600 students is high for very young children, according to documents provided by the school department.
Option Two would see a PreK and Kindergarten school with 382 students, and a grades one through five school with about 978 students. The state’s cost would be $71 million and the city would pay $5 million in additional funds for one building; the city’s cost for the second new building would be $25-30 million.
Options One and Two envision the buildings on one campus, providing for Saco’s elementary school students’ education for the foreseeable future, Ray said.
The third option envisions a new PreK through grade two building for 771 students, with the state contributing about $56 million and the city paying $5 million in additional costs. The second school building, at Saco’s expense, would not be built until some unknown point in the future, at a projected cost of $44 million, according to documents provided by the school department. Until a second school is built, C.K. Burns School, which recently marked its 100th anniversary, would continue to be used for students in grades three through five, with about 616 students.
The state’s construction process consists of 21 steps; Saco is currently on step 5.
The school department learned a couple of years ago that it came up on the Department of Education’s School Construction fund list — Young School came fourth on the list; C.K. Burns School was number 32, and Gov. John Fairfield School, 68 of the 75 schools in Maine listed as priorities. In the end, the state approved five school construction projects across the state, including Saco.
Ray said data shows that of all York County communities, Saco has the lowest amount of school debt.
“We have the opportunity to do something here and handle the next 50 years at these costs,” said Ray.“We’re trying to do what’s right for the community and students’ long term, and what the state will support.”
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