Voters Asked To Fund NHS Expansion Design

By John Voket

It only took four residents at an abbreviated town meeting this week to set the hours for a June 26 referendum that will either move a high school expansion project forward, or send it back to the drawing board for further refinements. Next Tuesday, between 6 am and 8 pm, any eligible Newtown voter may render his or her endorsement or opposition to the town spending $2.75 million for the design phase of a high school expansion that, in part, could help address concerns that have put the institution’s accreditation on warning status by the accrediting body.

Last year, citing in part the overcrowding at Newtown High School, the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC) placed its accreditation on a warning status. But going back as far as 1999, some local officials say the district and the school board predicted an eventual need to expand or even build a new high school.

While supporters of an expansion plan, including school board officials and school staff, want to see the plan move forward, other officials, including Finance Board Chairman John Kortze, suggest the numerous options that have been quickly presented and considered up to now may have given the impression that school officials and the Board of Education have not settled on a finished product. Rather, school officials are hoping to get design funds to further enable exploring the best possible way to maximize expansion aspects within the approximate $39 million remaining in the district’s Capital Improvement Plan request for the project.

“Speaking for myself, I think one of the sources of frustration about this project is, there seems to be no vision of a finished product as we move forward asking the taxpayers to authorize funding,” Mr Kortze told The Bee this week. “I acknowledge this is an extremely complicated project, but I was hoping to see a much more concrete idea of what the taxpayers will be getting at this stage of the game.”

The finance board chair said the timing of this referendum is also problematic, coming off historic back-to-back failed budget referenda that brought taxpayers to the polls three times before a 2007 municipal budget was approved.

“The public has demonstrated a tremendous desire to curtail spending,” Mr Kortze said. “The Board of Finance has been concerned about the district’s needs and the costs to address school space needs at the high school for four-and-a-half years.

“We are not the education experts. We have been requesting and relying on the Board of Ed for a long time to tell us exactly what we need, and the Board of Ed should have known well before this what the taxpayers should expect to get,” he said. “Next Tuesday we are asking them to approve the [first phase] of the single largest project ever facing the town.”

Mr Kortze said a referendum of this nature is the best and most concrete way to gauge how taxpayers want to move forward on the high school expansion.

School board chairman Elaine McClure agreed the referendum only represents authorization the architects’ fees.

“Once the plans are finalized, the public will be able to learn every detail of the planned project before the final authorization to fund the building phases are requested,” she said.

Ms McClure went as far as to suggest the public may be able to view a virtual tour of the proposed additions once her board endorsed a final version of the plan.

“Certainly there will be models,” she added.

The school board chair said, in her opinion, the strongest incentive to approve the high school design phase is the weighty status of the NEASC warning.

“The [school] board submitted a timetable plan for addressing accreditation concerns,” she said. “The association official the superintendent contacted this week said if the vote goes down, it could hasten the delivery of an accreditation probation.”

Ms McClure said another concern is the population at the high school continues to grow.

“We do not have unlimited space to install more modular classrooms,” she said. “We can only try to keep cramming it in to existing portables if there is relief in sight.”

She said if the design phase authorization goes down Tuesday, the district stands a chance of losing a year in the process of moving toward relieving space constraints.

“This would move occupancy from 2009 to 2010,” she said. “I’m not sure what we will do with all the students — we cannot offer all the courses students want to take. Or we can offer them, but we can’t fit all the students in.”

“This is a must for Newtown and I hope the voters will support it,” Ms McClure concluded.

She also mentioned that a year-round school schedule, which was suggested by Councilman Joe Candido as a consideration for alleviating space concerns, has been proven to not be a viable choice for the district to address space needs at this time.

Former school Superintendent John Reed contacted The Bee this week saying the proposal Mr DiCandido was suggesting could only work if all high school students were on a full-year schedule. He said to alleviate space in the current facility, the high school classes would have to be split, with some students attending for one part of the full year, and others attending in a staggered fashion, which would not overlap.

Dr Reed suggested this would create havoc with students, teachers, and families trying to juggle students participating in sports and extra-curricular activities, and if families had other students in conventional school year programs at the lower grade levels.

Any person who is a registered voter in the Town of Newtown or who is a US citizen who is assessed at least $1,000 for the real estate or motor vehicles on the 2006 Grand List for the Town of Newtown is qualified to vote at the referendum. Absentee ballots are available for the referendum during office hours, Monday through Friday, 8 am to 4:30 pm. The town clerk’s office will have special hours Saturday, June 23, from 9 am to noon for the sole purpose of absentee ballot voting.

Any qualified person who meets any of the following criteria may vote by absentee ballot: 1) active service in the Armed Forces, 2) absence from the town during all the hours of voting, 3) illness, 4) physical disability, 5) religious tenets that forbid secular activity on the day of the referendum or 6) duties as a referendum official at a polling place other than your own during all the hours of voting.

As per Connecticut General Statutes Sec. 9-140 and 9-369c, for a referendum held with less than three weeks notice, you may obtain an absentee ballot by applying at the town clerk’s office in person or designating one of the following to be your designee: 1) a person caring for you because of your illness, including but not limited to a licensed physician or a registered practical nurse, 2) a member of your family, 3) a police officer in the municipality in which you reside or 4) a registrar of voters or deputy registrar of voters in the municipality in which you reside.

Absentee ballots can be returned to the town clerk by mail or designee before the closing of the polls on referendum day at 8 pm, June 26. Anyone with specific questions is asked to call Town Clerk Cindy Simon at 270-4210.