BATH

With an option agreement for the Wing Farm site signed by the city of Bath, Regional School Unit 1 is prepared to move forward with getting project approval for a new high school from the Maine Department of Education.

Surveying of the Wing Farm location should be completed this week, said RSU 1 Superintendent Patrick Manuel, and Lavallee Brensinger Architects has begun exploring what the exterior of the Morse High School building could look like on the site. Sebago Technics has taken that building concept and looked at how parking, vehicle access and athletic fields would fit on the property.

“Our architecture firm and Sebago Technics feel confident that we have the room that we need at Wing Farm to have a very state of the art school as well as the sufficient parking, sufficient fields that we’re looking for at this point,” said Manuel.

Staff are visiting other new schools to seek ideas for the new Morse High School as well, Manuel added, although nothing related to design is set in stone yet. Until the project gets approval from the DOE, little can be done on designs and figuring out how the school will operate internally.

“We’ve got to get through, I guess you’d say, the boring part of the site approval, and then we can start with the concept design, which involves a heck of a lot more people,” said Manuel.

While the district is preparing to move the project forward with surveying and design work, the district must take two immediate steps. First, it must conduct a straw poll of the community to show support for the site, after which is must seek approval from the DOE. Only then can RSU 1 seek bids for a contractor, finalize designs, and ask communities to approve a bond to partially fund the project.

Manuel told the Bath council that he hoped the straw poll vote would be completed before the next board of directors meetings, which is currently scheduled for Nov. 28. In a meeting last week, the building committee discussed its intention to apply for DOE approval by the end of November, with the hope of having the Wing Farm site approved sometime this winter.

With the DOE’s announcement in September that it will be creating a new Rating Cycle Priority List for school construction projects, board chairman Timothy Harkins suggested that the community look into whether or not to reapply for funding for Fisher-Mitchell School and Dike-Newell School in Bath. With the new application process, all schools that were approved for state funding in 2011 will need to reapply by April 2017, according to a DOE press release.

“We’re right in the middle of this Morse project — it wasn’t that long ago we finished up with the Woolwich project,” said Harkins. “But I think as a community it would benefit us, and as a board, to have the discussion about the other schools in the RSU and whether or not it would be worthwhile to submit another application, and what that application would look like.”

Movement on Morse

What’s happening:

• Surveying of the Wing Farm site should be completed this week.

• Lavallee Brensinger Architects has begun exploring what the exterior of the school building could look like on the site.

• Sebago Technics has taken that building concept and looked at how parking, vehicle access and athletic fields would fit on the property.