The Board of Education listened to a Facilities Study presentation delivered by Director of Facilities John Barlow during the board’s Tuesday, September 3 meeting.

As Barlow stated when introducing it to the Board, the Facilities Study is only a draft report completed in July of this year by Bureau Veritas and will heavily inform the Capital Improvement Plan (CIP).

The study is a current state assessment of Newtown Public School buildings, including all four of the elementary schools, Reed Intermediate School, Newtown Middle School, and Newtown High School, and details issues identified in them.

Barlow highlighted several different near-term key findings, which are issues that are apparent in the one-to-five-year range, for each building. These issues vary between schools and range from lack of accessibility, flooring replacements, and poor site drainage to roof replacement and restoration, electrical system upgrades, and replacing aged HVAC systems.

One of the many examples that Barlow detailed during his presentation was that NMS’s emergency generator system, which provides the emergency lighting for the building and all the emergency systems, is “in dire need of being replaced” due to being “very aged out” at over 25 years old.

He also noted that NMS’s electrical system is in need of an upgrade, which is currently estimated at around $1.7 million. While he says that he skirted away from cost estimates throughout the presentation since the study is a draft and many prices are subject to adjustments, Barlow pointed out cases like this to explain that they are still negotiating with Bureau Veritas to “make sure that we’re putting good data forward with this and we’re not selling ourselves short.”

However, Barlow did say that, based on his expertise and experience, the $1.7 million estimate is “probably a fair price for the electrical system.”

Barlow said that he will follow-up with Bureau Veritas to confirm numbers and iron out the itemized report for each building, and that he is also waiting for them to complete the space functionality study.

As for the cost estimates, Barlow said he believes some of them “are a little on the low side,” and that with every year these get put off, the costs could potentially increase. He hopes to get the reports finalized on or around Friday, September 20, after which they will be sent to the BOE to start discussions on what they want to do with the buildings. The Facility Study itself, Barlow says, will be ongoing over the next year or more to come as it is the “foundation of our school district.”

When the time came for the Board to comment on and ask questions about the study, BOE member Brian Leonardi kicked things off by saying how impressed he is with what Barlow has done in terms of cost savings even where he has not been asked to do it. Leonardi then asked how would someone evaluate which of these issues are higher priority compared to ones where “you can squeeze a little bit more mileage out of what’s left.”

Barlow broke down the process of knowing which issues to prioritize into three steps: anything that can close the building, health and safety, and whether something is at the end of its life cycle. He added that there are a lot of big ticket items highlighted throughout the draft, and says that there are “some significant issues that are coming down the road.”

The plan, Barlow says, is to try to figure out and address whatever will close the buildings, and work from there. While he noted that these sort of equipment repairs or replacements are not unusual in any community, a lot of the times “the can was kicked down the road for years on these buildings.”

“Unfortunately … there’s a huge investment in these buildings,” Barlow said. “These are multi, multi-million dollar buildings at times, and when things start to fail, you have to look at your budgets and you have to say, ‘well, what are we going to fix and when are we going to fix it?’”

BOE member John Vouros asked if somebody will be telling them whether or not they should consider investing millions of dollars in a building over a certain amount of time, to which Barlow said that “nobody is going to sit here and tell you what you should or shouldn’t do with your buildings.”

The BOE has to look at both the district and current structures holistically and see what is the best fit for Newtown, Barlow says, and that this is a discussion the Board and district administration will have to sift over for weeks and months to come.

“So, yeah, the middle school does have some significant issues. There are also other buildings that have significant issues as well,” Barlow continued. “So where’s the best place to put our money, and how do we reroute things around, or how do we improve things? … This is the foundation and the basis for those discussions.”

When asked by BOE member Deborra Zukowski if there are alternate funding sources, Barlow said that “these are just raw numbers” and that “none of that was taken into account.” Barlow added that those numbers can be added in, but the town would ultimately have to appropriate the full amount of money to get the reimbursement rate.

After some additional discussion, BOE Chair Alison Plante said that the study will come back to their agenda.

As for next steps, Plante expects Barlow to work with Bureau Veritas on finishing off the study, and that the Board will take a look through it on or around September 20.

“I expect this will be an ongoing conversation,” Plante said. “This is the beginning, not the end of the conversation on the facility study. I think tonight was a great initial overview, and we’ll keep talking.”

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Reporter Jenna Visca can be reached at jenna@thebee.com.