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06/02/2021 12:00 AMIt has been described as one of the largest, and maybe one of the most important decisions facing Madison in at least a decade. The pricetag alone—still coming in between $120 and $130 million—makes it the kind of investment that can define a town for generations.
Last week, school administrators, consultants, and the Board of Education kicked off a process that in about nine months will ask Madison residents to make a decision on the future of the town’s school district: whether taxpayers will step up to build a brand new elementary school and reorganize remaining buildings or continue putting money into infrastructure that is functional but in danger of becoming obsolete.
“To me, our community deserves an answer,” said BOE member Katie Stein. “A lot of things hinge on this.”
After having previously angled for a November referendum, officials have pivoted to narrow in on a vote between December 2021 and February 2022.
The first public forum in this latest round—held virtually, even as some other boards and commissions have returned to in-person meetings—ran a little under 90 minutes, with dozens of questions and comments from residents following a presentation by Superintendent of Schools Dr. Craig Cooke on what the project will entail.
In September 2019, residents knew the plan as the “4-School Model,” and sometimes the “School Renewal Plan.” Put on hold (or “cryogenically frozen,” as BOE Chair Galen Cawley quipped at the public forum) back in the spring of 2020, it remains mostly intact, though officials have reframed the cost structure, with approximately $85 million bonded up front and $47 million from the town’s Capital Improvement Program (CIP) over the next decade.
Cooke said it is likely the district will be able to pull in about $10 million in grants, meaning that initial $85 million will be reduced to a $75 million hit to taxpayers.
Functionally, the plan calls for a brand-new elementary school to be built at one of two possible sites, either in the athletic fields abutting Polson, where the town already owns the land, or just west of the high school on Mungertown Road, on land that has yet to be purchased.
That school would open in the fall of 2025, assuming voters approve the plan.
Both have advantages and disadvantages, with the first site disrupting softball and field hockey for at least two years while the schools construct new athletic fields, and the second requiring a land purchase and potentially costing more for utilities.
Building directly in front of Polson would also require razing Jeffery to make room for those new athletic fields, while the Mungertown Road site would allow the town to preserve that building for municipal or other uses.
No matter what, Ryerson will be torn down if the referendum passes, with town officials saying its age and specific construction makes it essentially useless to the town.
The plan also calls for a significant revamp of Brown Intermediate School, converting it to K-5 and adding numerous other upgrades, including an outdoor classroom, which officials say is something that parents have called for particularly after the pandemic, and would take advantage of some of the natural beauty of that property.
Pre-K students that previously attended the Town Campus Learning Center would instead be served by the new elementary school.
The Arguments
As some residents have balked at the pricetag, particularly following the economic crunch around the pandemic, officials have sought to explain that no matter what voters decide regarding this plan, there will be a cost.
If no new school is built, maintenance on the current facilities is estimated to cost about $100 million over 10 years. Facilities Director Bill McMinn has warned some of these issues will be urgent, though others have been pushed off toward the end of that 10-year plan.
With the cost of building materials skyrocketing during the pandemic, other people have worried that the actual construction costs will be much higher if the district goes forward with new constructions and renovations in the current climate.
According to McMinn and Cooke, actual construction is still a year or two out, and the district has been advised by consultants that prices will almost certainly normalize before then, falling to somewhere near their pre-pandemic levels.
Another chorus of concern has come from those who see the plan as creating more dead-weight assets, potentially adding Jeffery and Ryerson to Academy and Island on the list of unused former school properties the town is saddled with.
First Selectman Peggy Lyons said at a Board of Selectmen meeting last week that the town would explore both municipal uses or a sale of Jeffery, assuming that building is not demolished along with Ryerson. She pointed out that a request for proposals (RFP) recently went out for Island and a facilities “master plan” is already weighing possibilities for both the Ryerson and Jeffery property, though what those possibilities are has not been discussed publicly.
Though Jeffery is the older of the two schools, it has had more extensive and more recent upgrades, most recently about 20 years ago, according to McMinn.
Traffic is another concern residents have brought up, as the town adds another school to the Green Hill Road area, also concentrating buildings in the southern part of the town.
Using the Mungertown Road site would reduce those traffic issues, Cooke said, though he acknowledged the district has concentrated schools in that area even before this plan.
Another concern brought up related to the pandemic is population. The district was required by the state to project future enrollment over the next decade ahead of seeking to build a new school, and that analysis found that Madison is likely to sharply reverse a downward student-age population, driven by a spiking birth rate and younger families moving to town.
At 82,000 square feet and with a capacity for 600 students, Cooke said that the new school can easily handle the next 10 years of enrollment increases. The high school also has plenty of room for long-term increases, currently operating well below its capacity, and Cooke added that the Ryerson or Jefferson properties could even host another school if the town saw continued increases past 2031.
Going forward, Cooke said the district hopes to have in-person public forums on the renewal plan. He and Cawley previously answered questions from and presented the plan to the BOS at their first in-person public meeting on May 24.