New school plan takes 1st step

By ETHAN HARTLEY
Posted 10/17/19

By ETHAN HARTLEY The prospects of possibly building a new high school in Warwick heated up beyond hypothetical talk on Tuesday night, as the Warwick School Committee unanimously agreed to go out to bid to find a consultant that would walk the district

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New school plan takes 1st step

Posted

The prospects of possibly building a new high school in Warwick heated up beyond hypothetical talk on Tuesday night, as the Warwick School Committee unanimously agreed to go out to bid to find a consultant that would walk the district through the process and provide various options – a necessary first step that keeps the city aligned on a tight deadline towards that goal.

“To put it in plain English, if the community has any desire at all to pursue a new school or dramatically improve the two high schools, this is a necessary step mandated by RIDE. This isn't something you do in house,” said School Committee at-large member David Testa. “This is a service you have to contract for and it's not cheap. It's very expensive.”

In that vein, Ward 2 Councilman Jeremy Rix, during the City Council’s meeting on Oct. 7, put forward a resolution during the unanimous consent portion to possibly allocate $100,000 to the school department to pay for the services of that consultant. That resolution will come up at the council’s next meeting on Monday, Oct. 21.

Rix said on Wednesday that he had been in talks with City Council President Steve Merolla and council Finance Committee chairman Ed Ladouceur about the resolution – both of whom have already been vocal about their support of looking into building a new school in Warwick.

Putting the resolution through unanimous consent also – if the money allocation is approved by the council – expedites the timeline for the school department to hire a consultant once they have responses to their RFP.

“Right now, given the climate and the market out there, these folks are quite busy,” said Superintendent Philip Thornton on Tuesday night. “So, at this point I think our best move would be to go out for bid and see what we can get for applicants.”

Effect on other projects

The possibility of a new school building – but not knowing where or when that possibility might materialize – poses some challenges to the school district in terms of planning for its ongoing capital bond projects that are funding renovations at all schools throughout the district.

To recap, the school department is nearing completion on the first round of projects that were made possible by a $6.8 million release from the first $40 million bond measure that was approved by voters last November. These included fire alarm system repairs, roof replacements and asbestos abatement projects, among multiple others.

Now, the school department has to prepare their pitch to the City Council for the second release of moneys from that $40 million bond – which finance director Anthony Ferrucci said would be in the range of $10-12 million, and could also be eligible for reimbursement through a 35 percent pay-as-you-go program from the Rhode Island Department of Education, bringing the city’s borrowing commitment down significantly.

Additionally, the school committee approved Tuesday night its finalized punch list for an approximately $79 million, phase two bond – an entirely new bond which will need city council, general assembly and voter approval – to continue the widespread renovation efforts.

However, the challenge lies in trying to plan for the possibility of a new high school being added to the mix. Of the $79 million new bond, $4.8 million of that is scheduled for work at Pilgrim High School, while $16.4 million is scheduled for work at Toll Gate. Additionally, part of the new release of bond money for the phase one, $40 million bond would currently includes a total replacement of the HVAC system at Pilgrim.

So, the question is then whether or not the school department should remove those construction elements entirely, as the schools where the work is slated to be done might be raised for a new building entirely. It was a quandary that generated some discussion.

“I don't know if there's a way to build a hedge for ourselves here, because the worst thing we can do to our kids and our teachers and our support staff is to carve something out – with the potential that the new building or regular remodeling of high schools goes down in flames – and now we have to figure out how do we fix what we originally said we needed to fix, but didn't because we thought we were going to get a new building,” Testa said. “I'm looking to try and protect ourselves.”

Ferrucci concurred with Testa, and said that there was some flexibility in terms of timing certain bond projects at the high schools so they could see if the new high school proposal materialized or didn’t.

“To continue with the application process will buy us some time with regards to the design plans of a potential high school down the road,” he said.

For example, Furrucci explained that should the school department go ahead with its plan for the Pilgrim HVAC to be replaced in the second release of bond funding, only to find out that the best plan for a new high school is to tear down Pilgrim, he said RIDE would be willing to work with the city to swap that HVAC project with another school in need of an HVAC repair – such as Winman or Toll Gate, which are both slated to get HVAC replacements through the $79 million bond.

“There's opportunities to move some projects around, but at the end of the day, Pilgrim will have new HVAC system, Toll Gate will have a new HVAC system and Winman will have a new HVAC system within the next two to three years,” Ferrucci said.

Knowing a new high school may be in the works would also behoove the district to reorganize the order of proposed projects scheduled for the remainder of the $40 million bond. For example, instead of doing the HVAC work at Pilgrim, they could instead prioritize the installation of ADA-compliant playgrounds or finishing renovation work on roofs and fire alarm systems.

“Let's delay the high school construction projects and go back and see what other projects can we do,” Ferrucci said.

And the word “delay” is an important one to understand its meaning in this context, stressed Testa.

“We're not killing the Pilgrim HVAC [project], all we're doing is delaying it. The public needs to know that,” he said. “We also have to know full well that we have a heating system at Pilgrim that is scary. So, we should keep our fingers crossed and say our prayers if we're the type of person who prays, and hope for mild winters.”

The school committee concurred that the school building committee should reconvene to re-prioritize the projects that would be made possible from the next release in funding from the $40 million bond to reflect the possibility of a new school. Ferrucci said they would be doing so within the week and would be back before the committee in a special meeting to hopefully be on the City Council’s docket by their first meeting in November to discuss the release of funding.

The committee also ultimately approved keeping the projects included within the $79 million bond proposition the same, knowing that they may have to eat some money for architectural and engineering design work on projects that may not ultimately be necessary – however, the committee agreed this is a relatively minor drawback to ensure that the district doesn’t put all its eggs in the hopeful basket of building a new school, which at this point is far from a guaranteed possibility.

“That to me, that's the responsible thing to do. We need all the options open, so I think we stand on the $79 [million bond request],” Testa said. “The only potential expenditure could be A&E [architectural and engineering] work on a project. Not the project itself. If that happened, I think anybody on this stage could stand up and defend that. Because at the time we made that decision, it was the right decision to make.”

The committee also hopes to come before the City Council to discuss the $79 million, phase two bond at the first meeting in November. The hope would be to gain approval from the council on both the release of funding and to go ahead with the application for the second bond, which would enable the school department to go out to bid for construction work to commence this upcoming summer.

“We would like to have these answers before Thanksgiving so we can get out and be competitively bidding,” Ferrucci said. “The longer we delay it, the more opportunity for them to line up other jobs.”

Comments

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  • Justanidiot

    da first couple of steps is to see who owns what property and will make money and second is where to connect the pump line into the taxpayers to get more bucks. cha ching ca pump

    Thursday, October 17, 2019 Report this

  • Former User

    I guess the financial condition of Warwick isn't so bad, after all, if officials are talking about borrowing enough money for a new school.

    And I guess the school department isn't so poorly run as the council claimed it was, if Merolla and Ladouceur are ready to support another huge bond for school buildings.

    They really could have used this realization back in February, when they and the mayor were crowing about an impending financial calamity.

    Friday, October 18, 2019 Report this

  • WarwickfortheKids

    These leaders have been going around in circles for years and wasting valuable time and resources for our children. Some are the same leaders who emphatically voiced opposition to any studies of new school buildings in the last $300,000 consultant engagement just a few years ago - the one that community members begged for - and advocated to not only create a long term vision for our school buildings, but to base building and consolidation decisions on educational planning for our students. But all leaders could do was to focus on consolidation, and the "immediate" needs to get our schools up to satisfactory condition (conditions that are still a long way off), not long term vision or educational planning that should drive building decisions. Any additional studies need to assess the educational programing for all high school students in the city. We need to look at updating and expanding our CTE programs (ones that allow students that wish to pursue four year college degrees have access to), possibly creating "academies" as SMMA suggested years ago, changing our geographic focus for high schools to an educational/interest based focus where we can leverage resources to expand opportunities. Building one new high school for the city would be the most cost effective - and provide the most opportunities for students. Just a few examples - AP classes (and others) could be offered in more than one period giving students more flexibility in their schedules, more classes and opportunities could be offered than may not currently have the numbers to make sense, extra curriculars that are inconsistently offered at both high schools could be available to all interested students, teachers would be in same building to plan and coordinate curriculum - CTE students wouldn't have to chose between staying in their district or pursuing a specific program, we could attract the best administrators, department heads, etc and provide students with consistency in curriculum, other opportunities, guidance, processes, rules. However, if we are not going to pursue one city wide high school, we need to fully examine the high school educational programming across the city and create a long term plan to bring all programs and buildings up to standards. This CANNOT be another small minded, narrow focus on buildings for the short term - and most importantly, one more dollar cannot be spent on assessing one building replacement without looking at the entire high school educational structure. Planning needs to be based on creating the best educational system and 21st century learning opportunities for ALL students in the most cost effective manner - the buildings follow the programming and Warwick is long overdue for improvement in both. Warwick has much potential but needs leadership that has long term vision and skills to achieve it. Any leader that does not insist that any building studies need to based on a comprehensive analysis of educational programming for our high school students, should not be in a leadership position.

    Friday, October 18, 2019 Report this

  • OldButInformed

    LET THE GRAFT BEGIN!!! With Warwick’s underfunded pension and benefit nightmare looming, the taxpayers don’t need the additional debt.

    Friday, October 18, 2019 Report this

  • Thecaptain

    WarwickfortheKids,

    Obviously you are an educator and city employee based upon your comments. However, having stated the obvious, it would be most important to your point if you used the basic principles of punctuation and did not use one long drawn out sentence filled with errors of punctuation and parallelism errors.

    As an educator, I would have assumed that this would be paramount. But then again, as as educator in Warwick, this is expected.

    Friday, October 18, 2019 Report this

  • WarwickfortheKids

    Thecaptain,

    Never an educator, or city employee (although your inference seems a bit hostile?)......just a taxpayer who cares about the future of our children. And fyi in case your browser is better - commenting on this site for some is extremely difficult - typing is very delayed, can't review before submitting, and deleting/editing is impossible. Maybe instead of trying to shame informal commenters on a clunky site, you should encourage dialog and involvement - and understand the value of perspective.

    Friday, October 18, 2019 Report this

  • WarwickfortheKids

    Thecaptain,

    Never an educator, or city employee (although your inference seems a bit hostile?)......just a taxpayer who cares about the future of our children. And fyi in case your browser is better - commenting on this site for some is extremely difficult - typing is very delayed, can't review before submitting, and deleting/editing is impossible. Maybe instead of trying to shame informal commenters on a clunky site, you should encourage dialog and involvement - and understand the value of perspective.

    Friday, October 18, 2019 Report this

  • warwick10

    Limit/caps on pensions AND eliminate lifetime healthcare! Not fair to taxpayers!

    School and education are more important! Education improves the lives of our children--they are the future to our city's success!

    Sunday, October 20, 2019 Report this

  • Apollo

    warwick10

    it's not free healthcare for life. Medicare kicks in

    Wednesday, October 23, 2019 Report this

  • Scal1024

    Captain, if you're going to basically call someone a dummy for a basic typo, you damn well better be sure your own comment doesn't have "as as" in it. We ALL make mistakes, it happens to ALL of US.

    Once again, you can't help but think you are better than someone else for something so trivial. As usual, you are 100% wrong in your assumptions. Stop trying to bully people you have simple disagreements with. Perhaps this is why you have the same 7 people lining up behind your cause for a decade now. People will never line up to support someone they don't like. You think you would've learned that by now...

    Friday, October 25, 2019 Report this