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04/10/2018 12:00 AMAcademy isn’t the only school building in town generating a lot of interest. Following the Board of Education (BOE) plan to close Island Avenue Elementary School in June 2019, the Island property, valued at approximately $3 million, has attracted interest from a third school community with a facility in flux.
Representatives of the Our Lady of Mercy (OLM) school community who hope to keep the school in town came before the Board of Selectmen (BOS) on April 9 to discuss the potential of leasing Island Avenue to OLM.
OLM, located at 149 Neck Road in town, is the main Catholic K-8 school serving Madison and Guilford since 1954. Over the past few years the school has been left in a state of flux following an announcement that the school’s lease would be terminated and then a more recent announcement early this year telling parents that the school would close at the end of this academic year.
Following the news of the imminent closure, OLM families banded together to begin looking for ways to separate the school from the local parishes to form an independent Catholic school, and find a permanent home, ideally still in Madison.
At a recent OLM parents’ meeting, committee member John Picard presented three potential building options the committee is investigating. One option involved going to Clinton, another involved trying to buy the current OLM facility, and another involves looking at potential facilities in town, namely Island Avenue.
At the BOS meeting on April 9, Picard thanked the town and public school officials for being open to discussions with OLM. He said OLM is asking if the town would consider leasing Island to OLM once the Madison BOE takes the school offline and turns the building over to the town.
Picard said there are lots of reasons to try to keep OLM alive in Madison, including the school’s history in town, its function as an attraction for some families to move to town, and potentially economic development benefits. Additionally, Picard noted that if OLM closes and parents chose to put their kids in the public school, the town could see an influx of 50 or more kids and an accompanying increase in costs.
At this time, Picard said he has two requests of the town. One is to consider a formal lease agreement that would be contingent upon when the BOE closes Island and lease negotiations such as price and timeframe.
“The second thing would be more symbolic or more ceremonial, that this board today would take some sort of resolution or action just for us to work together as we have been in a unified effort to try and keep OLM in Madison,” he said.
First Selectman Tom Banisch said there isn’t much the town can do right now because the BOE still has the school and he doesn’t want to put any pressure on the board to hurry the process along.
Superintendent of Schools Tom Scarice said the district is still on track to close Island in 2019, but up until about two weeks ago hadn’t really focused on when exactly the keys would be turned over to the town. Scarice said the focus has been working on a redistricting plan and all other projects that would have to be accomplished before the building is formally closed.
“We had not talked about officially when we take the last file cabinets out of the schools and so forth,” he said. “That had not been a high priority of us. That would take a little time, but it certainly wouldn’t take 12 years like the problem we have on the green right now [a reference to the empty Academy School building], so basically if there is an urgency, we would need to know about it.”
Banisch said the board was not ready to consider a formal lease agreement with OLM but he was comfortable with Picard’s request that the town continue to work with OLM.
“I am going to make a kind of murky motion to just see what we can do to try and help them and to work with them find some answers and some solutions,” he said.
The board voted unanimously to approve the motion, a move greeted by applause from the 30-plus OLM community members attending the meeting. However, resident Catherine Ferrante, who had previously suggested the idea of bundling the Island and Academy properties together to try to find a solution to Academy that doesn’t involve housing developments on the space behind Academy, said the board should look carefully at the benefits of a lease with OLM before moving forward.
“I would urge the board to examine the financial impact to the town of leasing to OLM,” she said. “The BOE has determined that Island Avenue would fetch $3 million as-is with the building on it and to also consider the impact to the tax rolls of a private housing development on the Island Avenue property. If a potential lease to OLM doesn’t add up to a similar benefit to the town, then the board should consider whether it wants to elevate the interests of a private religious group over that of the Madison taxpayers.”