Scarborough Public Schools is working with the town to advance a new school project that would address the capacity limitations at the town’s current primary schools. With Scarborough’s population exceeding the infrastructure and capacity of the current schools, one large consolidated school would replace the existing ones and serve all students.

The option of creating one unified school is the top solution being examined due to suggestions that it is the most economic and effective answer.

“This is a school that will be built to serve the needs of the Scarborough of today and the growth of Scarborough of tomorrow,” said Shannon Lindstrom, chair of the Scarborough School Board. “In order to do so, an extensive and collaborative process was applied to find a site that best fit the goals of the school and needs of the community at large.”

Work has been done to advance the project, such as enrollment studies, extensive meetings, and more.

“Our goal when designing this process was to make sure it was conducted so the community would feel confident in its integrity, transparency, and thoroughness,” Lindstrom said.

The goals of the project are to unify the three primary schools, remove all 30 district portables, alleviate the overcrowding at the middle school, and work in alignment with the town comprehensive plan and community initiatives.

The consequences of not doing the project would be reduced safety and security, lack of program spaces, energy efficiency, higher operation costs, and fiscal irresponsibility, according to the school board.

The school board is currently working with the town on a site selection process to find a location for the new school. The criteria being looked at in the site selection process are safety, environment, location and future expansion, soils and topography, utilities, traffic and transportation safety, public services, cost, availability, community involvement, and local criteria.

Consultation with both the community, consultants and experts, and local leaders are all being done.

Most recently, on April 5, the town council held an executive session to discuss authority for a land purchase agreement. On April 13 a community forum was held to review the site selection process and due diligence.

For more information, visit https://www.scarboroughschools.org/new-sps-building-project.

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