SCARBOROUGH – The newly formed Wentworth Building Committee voted on Monday to pursue a plan to build a new school for Scarborough students in grades 3-5.

The 38-member committee, made up of school officials, parents and community members, was formed after problems with air quality re-emerged at the aging Wentworth Intermediate School when students returned in September. Monday marked the second meeting of the group, whose first task was to decide whether Wentworth should be renovated or rebuilt, with an overall goal of putting a proposal in front of voters next November.

To help, the group on Monday heard from guest speakers Jerrol Crouter, an attorney from Drummond Woodsum who works in school construction litigation, and Brian Bowman, co-owner of Bowman Constructors, a Newport-based construction company with 25 years of school construction experience.

While Crouter pointed out that there are some advantages to renovation – it is typically less expensive than new construction, for one – both he and Bowman recommended a new building.

“With new construction, you start with a clean slate. You can design a school that meets your needs,” said Crouter. “You are not working with a building that is already there.”

Building new, Crouter said, reduces the amount of unforeseen obstacles that are commonly seen with renovations. It also reduces the impact on education because students do not have to go to school in a building while construction takes place.

“New is easy. It is well planned and you get a brand new building with all the bells and whistles,” Bowman said. “Renovation is very, very difficult, especially at this scale. The disruption is huge.”

Plans to build a new Wentworth school have faced opposition in the past.

In 2006, the last time the idea of replacing Wentworth came up, it was determined that renovating the school would have been $4.6 million less than the cost of constructing a new school. However, a plan to build a new, $38.3 million school was put on the ballot, where it was soundly rejected by voters. The plan was part of a larger $54.9 million project that also included renovations to Scarborough Middle School.

Dan Cecil, an architect from Harriman Architects and Engineers hired to help the committee design the school, said no design work has been done since the 2006 vote. He said to construct a building of Wentworth’s size it would take at most two years, with a lot of the work being done during summer breaks.

While the Wentworth school is one level, Cecil would recommend the new school be a two-story building on a smaller footprint. Doing that, he said, increases the building’s energy efficiency.

“The smaller footprint is always a good thing because that smaller footprint means there is less surface you are exposing to the weather,” he said.

With the choice of building new or reconstructing now decided, the group’s members have been divided into eight subcommittees to look into planning of the school project. The whole committee will convene next on Dec. 20.

Jackie Perry, a Board of Education member who serves on the committee, said, in the end, the group has to sell whatever project it recommends to the entire Scarborough community, not just those with children in the school.

“We need to look at this for not only the school community, but the total town community,” said Perry. “We have to justify whatever we put into the school is best for all of us in the community.”