BRUNSWICK

Brunswick School Committee members likely will decide tonight whether to pursue construction of a new facility on the site of the defunct Jordan Acres School, to replace the ailing Robert P.T. Coffin Elementary School.

The Coffin School is overcrowded and in severe disrepair. School board members say the estimated $18 million needed to rebuild and enlarge it is within a few million dollars of the likely price tag of erecting an entirely new, modern, energy-efficient institution.

For the past several months, PDT Architects of Portland has refined numerous test designs to ascertain whether the Jordan Avenue parcel is suitable for a new elementary school large and modern enough to suit the town’s needs. At almost four acres, the potential site also would include some adjacent town-owned conservation property that would be contributed to the project.

According to architect Lyndon Keck, tentative capacity of the new school would be a maximum of 720 children — 600 full-day students, plus two consecutive half-day preschool programs of 60 children each.

Building the new school on Jordan Avenue would allow for the existing Coffin School on Columbia Avenue to be demolished, in turn providing room for the eventual enlargement and rehabilitation of the junior high school.

According to the district’s November newsletter, the existing bus garage and staging location at Columbia Avenue would remain, and the earliest a referendum to fund the new school would be placed before town voters would be November 2014.

Plans to build a new school superceded the board’s previous intention, hatched in 2011, to simultaneously renovate and expand the Coffin and Junior High schools. However, further scrutiny of the buildings led to sharply escalated project estimates, and in June board members decided instead to weigh locally funded construction of a new elementary school.

An eventual reworking of Brunswick Junior High School likely would follow within several years with state building fund assistance, according to district Superintendent Paul Perzanoski:

“The possibility (exists) that state construction funding may be available in three years or less,” Perzanoski wrote in the newsletter. “Filing an application does not ensure funding as we would be competing against applications from all over the state, but you can’t win if you don’t play.”

Also tonight, the board is expected to accept the resignations of several staffers, including the high school’s longtime assistant — and, of late, frequent interim principal — Donna Borowick.

Originally planning to retire at the end of the 2012- 13 school year, Borowick delayed her retirement for six months so administrators could search for a new principal in the wake of former administrator Art Abelmann’s abrupt resigation in May.

Also tonight, district Assistant Superintendent Greg Bartlett will present a summary of his early- November trip to China as a cultural and exchange program ambassador.

Bartlett spent nine days touring the Zheijang province with other American educators, cultivating relationships with administrators in numerous Chinese schools that could result in the establishment of a formal exchange program.

jtleonard@timesrecord.com

WHAT: Brunswick School Committee WHEN: Tonight, 7 p.m.
WHERE: Morrell Meeting
Room, Curtis Memorial Library, 23
Pleasant Street