Return of the School Facilities Planning Study

By Ryley McGinnis

MANSFIELD, Conn. — The Board of Education’s pre­vi­ous attempts to make changes to the Mans­field schools have failed for lack of sup­port, but this time they GRAMMAR have employed an out­side con­sult­ing group to include com­mu­ni­ty input.

The board start­ed WORD CHOICE a facil­i­ty plan­ning study to assess the public’s opin­ion on the needs of the town’s aging ele­men­tary schools and mid­dle school. Dis­trict Man­age­ment Group from Boston was select­ed PASSIVE for out­side consulting.

The cost of the con­sult­ing group is cov­ered by the “Busi­ness Man­age­ment” sec­tion of the Super­in­ten­dent’s AP STYLE pro­posed 2017–2018 bud­get which is on Mans­field Pub­lic Schools’ web­site. This has a bud­get of $473,450, but no spe­cif­ic num­ber was giv­en for the cost of the Dis­trict Man­age­ment Group. 

“We select­ed Dis­trict Man­age­ment Group through a com­pet­i­tive bid­ding process; more than a dozen firms respond­ed but we select­ed this group because they are more of a plan­ning and strate­gic actions kind of firm as opposed to an archi­tec­tur­al firm,” said Super­in­ten­dent Kel­ly Lyman.

The board is using the study to find a real­is­tic solu­tion to the struc­tur­al issues of the four schools, built in the 1950s and 60s AP STYLE, said Kathy Ward, board chair. 

Some peo­ple agree with the use of a con­sult­ing group this time around, while oth­ers believe it should be a more inside job.

“I think it’s a good idea, it’s good to gauge the population’s opin­ions and get a feel for what they want,” said Richard Weyel, a res­i­dent and sec­ond grade teacher at Good­win Ele­men­tary School.

On the oth­er hand, Nan­cy Titchen, an enrich­ment teacher at Good­win Ele­men­tary, said the issue should have stayed with­in the town. 

Dis­trict Man­age­ment Group has spent two days on site con­duct­ing pri­vate inter­views, except for town council’s meet­ing which was pub­lic, with stake­hold­ers on the issue, said Lyman. 

Stake­hold­ers include the board, town coun­cil, par­ents, teach­ers and tax­pay­ers, Lyman said. 

“We haven’t got­ten any feed­back yet. This is the next step that will prob­a­bly hap­pen in two or two and a half weeks,” said Lyman.

Accord­ing to pub­lic meet­ing min­utes, two mem­bers of the con­sult­ing group met with mem­bers of the Town Coun­cil on April 5, 2017 to talk about the pur­pose of the study.

The con­sult­ing group said it wants to cre­ate a vision of what the com­mu­ni­ty wants in its schools and as part of the learn­ing experience.

“I have to keep an open mind; if I don’t, the whole point of the con­sult­ing group meet­ing with peo­ple and get­ting their opin­ions won’t work,” said May­or Paul Shapiro.

Dis­trict Man­age­ment Group also held a pub­lic forum on March 13 and April 5, said Ward. There were no meet­ing min­utes from this forum. 

“We want schools that are meant for the 21st cen­tu­ry, and the cur­rent build­ings are aging, not ener­gy effi­cient and not con­ducive for this,” said Ward.

“The cur­rent schools were built on a dif­fer­ent mod­el of learn­ing. They don’t lend them­selves well to team teach­ing and lack flex­i­ble spaces for learn­ing,” said Weyel. 

Ward said even when the town fig­ures out what is best, changes could still be lim­it­ed by avail­able funds.

“We try to be fis­cal­ly respon­si­ble and not to spend mon­ey where it isn’t nec­es­sary,” said Ward.

Along with Dis­trict Man­age­ment Group’s work, Lyman said the board will assess the mechan­ics of the schools, includ­ing the plumb­ing, floors and any­thing to do with the con­di­tion of the buildings.

It will pro­vide cost assess­ments to keep up the old schools over the long term, said Maria Capri­o­la, Assis­tant Town Manager.

“Most of the con­cern at the pub­lic forums Dis­trict Man­age­ment Group held was mak­ing sure that we didn’t repeat what hap­pened last time,” said Lyman.

In Jan­u­ary 2006, the town cre­at­ed a spe­cial build­ing com­mit­tee that looked at the state of the build­ings which lead the board to pro­pose that the three ele­men­tary schools be con­sol­i­dat­ed into one brand new school, said Capriola.

“It didn’t get any sup­port from the com­mu­ni­ty, so the issue was put on hold,” said Capriola.

Accord­ing to 2006–2007 meet­ing min­utes of the com­mit­tee, most of the issues with the schools involved a lack of space for spe­cial edu­ca­tion learn­ing, com­put­er labs and struc­tur­al issues with the buildings. 

Con­sol­i­dat­ing the ele­men­tary schools from three schools into one and ren­o­vat­ing the mid­dle school was one of four options, and it was the cheap­est at $21 mil­lion, accord­ing to the meet­ing min­utes on August 20, 2008.

The oth­er options were to repair and main­tain the four schools at $25 mil­lion, com­plete­ly ren­o­vate the ele­men­tary schools with lim­it­ed addi­tions and ren­o­vate the mid­dle school for $51 mil­lion, or com­plete­ly ren­o­vate two of the ele­men­tary schools with full addi­tions and ren­o­vate the mid­dle school for $45 million. 

After an ini­tial infor­ma­tion meet­ing in March 2010 where the build­ing com­mit­tee rec­om­mend­ed con­sol­i­dat­ing, they had to recon­sid­er the one school option and chose to look into build­ing two new ele­men­tary schools. 

How­ev­er, in March 2011, Town Coun­cil vot­ed not to send the issue to ref­er­en­dum based on con­cerns from the com­mu­ni­ty about cost, tax­es and the effect on the town, accord­ing to March 14, 2011, meet­ing minutes.

Ward said that this time is different.

“We are try­ing our best to make sure this is a col­lab­o­ra­tion of all of the stake­hold­ers in the issue, not just a board deci­sion to be rub­ber-stamped,” said Ward.

Ward and Lyman are meet­ing reg­u­lar­ly with Shapiro and Town Man­ag­er Matthew Hart to ass­es the issue and the study’s find­ings, Ward said.

This will hope­ful­ly give a for the future of the schools and could pos­si­bly lead to build­ing new schools to replace the old ones, Capri­o­la said.

“For the Town Coun­cil specif­i­cal­ly, last time we weren’t involved until the very tail end. This time around we are get­ting involved ear­li­er,” said Shapiro.

After the Dis­trict Man­age­ment Group is done with its assess­ment, Ward said the board will cre­ate a vision com­mit­tee of about 12 people.

This com­mit­tee will con­sist of par­ents and mem­bers of the board and will help take the infor­ma­tion the Dis­trict Man­age­ment Group gath­ered to see what is a real­is­tic and afford­able option for the schools.

“I’m on the fence about the issue, I can see both sides. How­ev­er, teach­ing the­o­ry has evolved over-time. We are try­ing to indi­vid­u­al­ize and max­i­mize every child’s poten­tial and we need a change for that,” said Weyel.