Members of four working groups met weekly in the spring to find potential ways to address Scarborough’s school building issues. Voters rejected a proposed $160 million complex in November, and now the town is working again to address school overcrowding. Drew Johnson / Leader

Scarborough will work with the same architectural firm that aided in the $160 million proposal for a school project, which failed in a referendum vote last year, to work on a new proposed solution to the town’s overcrowded schools.

The Phase 2 School Building Advisory Committee recommended Harriman Architects to the Board of Education and the board voted unanimously to hire the firm again last week. Councilors, board members and committee members at a joint workshop on Nov. 21 emphasized they are starting fresh on this new proposal.

SBAC Chair Charlie Peters said at the workshop that, in its interview process with Harriman and other firms, the committee addressed the elephant in the room: hiring the same consultant and designer after the $160 million failed at the November 2023 election by a vote of 5,913 to 3,364.

“In the interviews, I know that a few of our subcommittee members really pressed hard on some of the shortcomings of the first project and how it will be received,” Peters said. “Harriman didn’t shy away from that.”

Harriman, Peters explained, said they were tasked to design a consolidated K-3 school that addressed the problems board members and the last committee requested the plan to solve, and they completed that task.

“They were tasked to do a consolidated school,” Peters said. “This project isn’t that. This is to find the right solution … They certainly expressed excitement to look at this differently and in a fresh light.”

Cape Elizabeth worked with Harriman to design an $89.9 million school project that was narrowly defeated at the polls in this November’s election. Cape Elizabeth’s school board also rehired the firm last week.

Peters said partnership, collaboration and community engagement were major takeaways for committee members as they interviewed and received presentations from multiple applicants.

“Our recommendation is to contract Harriman to help us through this process,” he said.

Multiple town and school officials at the Nov. 21 workshop said that how they and the committee communicate with the public throughout the process will be key, which they learned after the November 2023 rejection.

As an example, school board Chair Shannon Lindstrom explained when people asked if additions to the town’s schools would suffice last time around, she “was quick to say, ‘No, we can’t,'” when the correct answer was, “‘We could, however, here’s why we didn’t go that way.'”

“When we talk about messaging, when we’re talking about making sure we’re clear, when we’re talking about making sure the community knows factual information, it’s really important that we’re mindful of how we speak,” Lindstrom said.

Town Councilor Jon Anderson said how they approach selecting a site for the project should be different this time around. In coming up with the $160 million proposal, the plan to purchase a plot of land from The Downs downtown development came late in the process and many residents opposed the location.

“I hope that we prioritize the site selection process soon to get going, at least just to know what’s out there,” Anderson said.

Larry Cain, vice chair of the committee, said they are prepared to do so.

“One of the changes we directly discussed with Harriman was that we need to do the site selection in parallel … which is difficult,” Cain said. “The early work would be a real blanket identification of every possible site and then, as we narrow down the choice of which option we’re going to pursue, we’d fine-tune that (to find) the likely sites to fit that profile.”

The Phase 1 School Building Advisory Committee proposed four potential solutions to overcrowding this summer: building a fourth primary school; building a new school for Grades 2 and 3; preserving the primary and middle schools via additions; and building a new K-3 primary school that is less expensive than the $160 million proposal. Harriman and the Phase 2 committee will vet those projects and boil them down to a final proposal.

“We’re starting this approach in a very different place than the district chose to start in the last rendition,” said Superintendent Diane Nadeau. “We’re looking at four proposals that have broad community support from the 60 people that were part of the initial group. We’re basing our ideas from the grassroots level from members of the community who said, ‘These are the things that are important to us.'”