Eight Corners Primary School, one of the local schools in Scarborough. Michael Kelley / The Forecaster

The Scarborough Town Council met with the Scarborough School Board in a workshop on Feb. 1 to advance a new school projec to address the lack of space at the town’s primary schools.

The town’s population has exceeded the capacity and infrastructure of the three primary schools, according to the School Board, a problem that will only grow with time. Thirty portable school units are already in place at the primary schools to help alleviate capacity needs.

The proposed school would be a large consolidated school that would replace the other primary schools and serve all those students. The planning and construction would take five years, according to the board.

“There’s sort of a wall there that we’ve hit and it’s really critical that we get to a solution that is a sustainable one. Portable is not a sustainable solution, especially for a municipality like Scarborough,” said Dana Fortier, Building Committee chair and community member. “We’re going to have additional capacity problems if we don’t address this now and the situation will only get worse and worse, until we may not be able to accommodate it and we’ll be in a really bad situation.”

The school board and the town council also examined the possibility of building a fourth primary school instead. But the board advocated for building a consolidated school, as the four-school option would require rebuilding the three existing schools as well as creating the new one to fill Scarborough’s need. New staffing, districting, and bus services would have to be added to the town as well. The board estimated the four-school option to be about four times more expensive than the unified school project. Additionally, the four-schools option is estimated to take nine to 12 years to construct, as opposed to the four to five years for the unified school option. The larger time frame would also create more time for inflation to drive the cost up, Fortier said.

Price data was calculated in 2017 for the analysis, though the board will soon reanalyze with current information.

“This is what I do for a living, and this is not a good option,” said Fortier of the four-school option. “We need to update the numbers and we will, but it’s not going to be something that is going to be financially viable or the best solution for the town.”

Council Chair Jon Anderson summarized the board’s analysis. “So the construction costs (of the four-school option) may be smaller near-term, but longer term to get all the facilities up to where they need to get to, those costs will continue to be astronomical as we go forward to update the current schools to get them more up to where we want them to be,” Anderson said. “But additionally, the operating costs (of the four-school option), because you’re really just adding an entire fourth operation into the mix. That goes up and we don’t get the efficiencies that are an issue today in terms of heating, cooling, because my understanding is that the primary schools right now are rather inefficient and that costs money. So we are going to lose operational savings and we’re going to add a whole bunch of operating costs. New teachers, new bus drivers, new buses that are going to be needed to address the operating cost of the fourth school.”

Councilor April Sither supported the unified school option, pointing out the consequences of how long the four-school option would take. “The longer this process takes us, the longer our current portables are going to stay in use. And so if we are talking about a 12-year buildout to add a fourth school we are talking about the entire sixth grade population at the middle school being in portables for another decade and we are still going to have the same capacity issues at current schools that we have now … I am just as attached to my neighborhood primary school as the next person, but the reality and the viability of this for me as a K-8 solution is that we need a solution that’s not going to take us 12 years to get to.”

Overall, the council had mixed reactions to the proposed unified school project, with most members being cautiously supporttive. However, as the meeting was a workshop, nothing was formally decided.

“I think getting updated refreshed data is the blocker for me to move forward,” Anderson said. “I would like to see not a lot of work done on other options. I hear what you say, Dana, about time is of the essence, but if we don’t do our homework when this goes to referendum and have that available for the public to know we did our due diligence … to me that’s a reason for someone to vote no and I don’t want to give anybody a reason to vote no with the solution we want to put forward.”

Some members of the council had concerns with the idea of a consolidated school.

Councilor John Cloutier pointed out that he thought the small primary schools were a salient feature of the town.  “I don’t dispute or disagree with anything that’s been said, just personally for me, I moved to Scarborough for the small schools at that grade level,” he said. “And I understand the numbers probably make more sense to consolidate and services that you can provide, but I think there are some benefits to the small local schools that I haven’t fully reconciled in my process or head that I’m willing to part with. That doesn’t mean I won’t get there, and I certainly won’t try to block anything.”

Councilor Don Hamill said he is hesitant about the project. “I think we’re kind of in love with the concept, because it makes sense and compared to the keeping the primary schools open that is a pretty good choice, a pretty clear choice. But I think there a lot of things that have not been validated, not only including the huge number, but also the way we’re approaching doing this and the assumptions we are making in terms of square footage requirements and so forth. And I think some of the opportunities in the middle haven’t been explored fully and we’re so far down the road on one option, and dealing with time pressure, that we want to move ahead with something that I think will have grave difficulty with the public.”

Anderson said in making a final decision it is inportant for the council to be information and share communication with the public.

“It’s important that us as elected officials with the school board really do put in the effort to become as informed as we can, because we do have a responsibility to the public and the community to make sure that we do address the problem,” Anderson said. “I think while the solution might still be in question, I think all of us agree that there is a problem that needs a solution, and the longer we take to make that decision the more expensive it’s going to be, the more risks we are going to have, and so time is a little bit of the essence. What I’m hearing is there is a need for us to have a little more information to get fully onboard the consolidated option, but also a general bigger concern about the public and their ability to get the information they need to make an informed decision.”