Students walk down the hall inside the portable area at Eight Corners Primary School in April 2024.  Brianna Soukup / Portland Press Herald

Scarborough’s School Building Advisory Committee received cost estimates for seven potential solutions to its overcrowded school system last week and on Monday voted to eliminate two of those options from consideration.

Cost estimates provided by Harriman Architects for the seven options range from $119 million to $162 million.

However, Lisa Sawin of Harriman Architects said there are avenues to scale back on some of the options to bring them within the $70 million to $130 million range – one deemed digestible by most voters based on a public survey following the rejection of a $160 million proposal in November 2023.

The committee voted to eliminate Option E, which called for building a new K-5 elementary school and converting Wentworth into a K-5 school, by a vote of 10-9 with one member abstaining. Option F, building a new K-2 community school, was also eliminated by a vote of 19-0, with one member abstaining.

Scarborough’s School Building Advisory Committee voted to eliminate Options E and F from consideration at its meeting on Monday. Contributed / Harriman Architects

The prevailing argument to remove Option E from consideration was the estimated cost of $156 million with no tangible way of getting it below $130 million. Unlike other options, Option E does not make room for sixth graders to move to Wentworth and the only way to cut a significant portion of the cost would be to leave the middle school untouched. That would mean sixth graders would continue to learn in portable classrooms and other needs there, such as heightened safety, would go unaddressed.

Option F, estimated to cost $136 million, was deemed unattainable, leading to the nearly unanimous vote to remove it. The proposal call for Wentworth to absorb the sixth grade from the middle school but it would still host third graders, unlike many of the other options that moved that grade to a different school. Hosting four grades there would require a large addition – one Harriman Architects concluded the current site can’t accommodate.

“When we go to a (Grades) 3-6 addition at Wentworth, we need so many classrooms we are beyond the footprint where we showed the addition would go and more than the two stories can handle,” Sawin said. “Essentially, it doesn’t work: We can’t get enough classrooms in there.”

Option G, which would build a new school for Grades 1-3 at an estimated cost of $159 million, will remain on the table after a vote to eliminate it failed, 7-12, with one member abstaining. If the scope of that concept is reduced, it could get under the $130 million threshold, according to Harriman.

Option A, maintaining the primary and middle schools, is estimated at $119 million; Option B, building a fourth primary school, is estimated at $132 million; Option C, building a new Grades 1-2 school, is estimated at $162 million; and Option D, building a new K-3 school, is estimated to cost $156 million. Those four options were developed by Phase 1 of the School Building Advisory Committee and remain on the table with pathways to reduce their costs.

The committee will release a survey to the public later this month requesting input on the remaining five options. Once armed with that feedback, the committee will work to eliminate more options from consideration ahead of a second public survey.