We have to ask. How does a Board of Education approve a $32 million middle school project without any public discussion?

That is apparently what happened back in June 2006, when, according to school board chairman Elaine McClure, her board submitted a five-year capital improvement plan to the town, including $2.9 million in architectural and engineering fees associated with that project. Those fees were determined when the Board of Education selected one of three options for renovation and expansion of Newtown Middle School outlined in a report on the proposed project, dated May 10, 2006, by the architectural firm Fletcher-Thompson, which subsequently designed the high school expansion.

At some point, the school board had to choose the $32.4 million “Option A” for the middle school over the $30.9 million “Option B” and the $63 million “Option C,” but no one seems to remember when. The board chairman tried to remember last week and concluded, “We had to have discussed it at the June 19 [2006] meeting, we chose Option A.” But the minutes of that meeting, and all the other school board meetings in May and June of that year, reflect no discussion or vote on the middle school renovations and expansion.

The chairman speculated that the clerk taking minutes at the meeting might have missed discussion of the project. The clerk was attentive enough, however, to record detailed discussion at that meeting on the purchase of a van, the schedule for NHS graduation, the high school expansion, a food allergy policy, a school bus contract, Hawley School’s HVAC project, and even comments by some board members about an article in The Newtown Bee. We don’t think the clerk would have missed discussion and a vote on a $32 million project.

While there never was any public presentation on the details of the middle school plans included in the Fletcher-Thompson report, the school district business manager did forward the estimated cost of the project to the town’s finance director on June 21, 2006, for inclusion on the town’s Capital Improvement Plan (CIP). The projected start date for the project was 2011-2012. The costs for the expansion and renovations, however, were estimated in 2009 dollars, meaning that the real cost of the project could possibly exceed the $41.5 million cost of the high school expansion.

Additionally, when the Board of Education gave the Board of Finance and the Legislative Council its prioritized list of capital projects in June of this year, it included more than $10 million in roof replacement and HVAC projects at the middle school. A significant portion of the costs for those projects appear to be duplicated in the $32.4 million middle school proposal shown to the Board of Finance late last month. When Newtown’s budgetmakers got to see the details in the 2006 Fletcher-Thompson report on October 25, they began to ask the questions that should have been addressed a year and a half ago — questions that the school board didn’t have ready answers for, since no one could seem to remember a board discussion of the project.

As a result of this week’s local elections, there will be some new members on the Board of Education. We hope that the changing face of the school board will bring new leadership to the board — leadership that won’t end up in the embarrassing position of blaming the clerk for its lapses, but will demand full and open public discussion at its meetings of major projects affecting every taxpayer.