BRUNSWICK

The Brunswick School Board will recommend to the town council a plan to repair Brunswick Junior High School, mothball Coffin School and replace it with a new elementary school on the site of the now-defunct Jordan Acres School.

Wednesday’s decision follows five years of discussion and public outreach over the district’s aging schools.

Coffin School opened in 1955, and its adjacent mobile units are nearly as old.

The junior high school was built in 1959, but has since undergone additions as well as a major renovation as the result of a fire.

Structural problems contributed to the unexpected closure of Jordan Acres School in 2010 and the building has since been used for storage.

The exact cost of the project is to be determined. The board will bring the plan to PDT Architects for a final number before approaching the council.

However, the last estimated figures run a little more than $27.6 million to build a new elementary school and adequately repair the junior high.

The board rejected a less expensive plan to repair both Coffin and the junior high.

Board member Rich Ellis said that a fundamental problem with the repair option is there simply wouldn’t be enough classrooms to serve the district’s kindergarten through fifth grade students.

“As plans evolved in these most recent days, it became very clear to me that one of the solutions we were evaluating involved a tremendous number of mobile classrooms that Brunswick has had a pretty spotty history in managing appropriately,” Ellis said.

Ellis said new construction seemed to be more of a permanent solution over other options that involved 12 and 18 mobile class units.

Sarah Singer added that the unsightly mobile units parked at Coffin School may be a deterrent to families looking to relocate to Brunswick.

Board member Teresa Gillis said that although she has children in the Brunswick school system, they will not reap the benefits of a new school. She wanted the people of the town to know she does not take sending a plan to spend upward of $30 million of their money lightly.

“It weighs on me heavily — I honestly couldn’t sleep for a while,” an emotional Gillis said.

Gillis said everyone in life has a responsibility to leave things better than they found them, and that it wouldn’t be responsible to put “Band- Aids” on problems and push responsibility onto others.

The only dissenting voice was that of Board Chairman William Thompson, who said he will not be supporting the new construction project.

“I’d love to have a new school, I just don’t think that we can afford $30 million. I think we can afford $12 million,” Thompson said.

Thompson said he feared the burden would be too great on operational costs, affecting educational programming that he says is paramount.

The process still has a long road ahead, as the town council will now weigh in before going before the voters for final approval or rejection that would send the school board back to the drawing board.

dmcintire@timesrecord.com