Board of Ed Looks to Move Forward With Riverfield Expansion and Renovation

The Board of Education is scheduled Tuesday night to ask First Selectman Michael Tetreau to form a building committee for the estimated $9.1 million expansion and renovation of Riverfield School.

"I think it's an absolute priority," Pam Iacono, the school board's vice chairman, said Friday afternoon. "It's old, it's dilapidated and it's lacking appropriate teaching space."

"All you need to do is walk through the building and realize it's in need of a major facelift."

School board Chairman John Mitola said the expansion of Riverfield was designed not only to accommodate current students but possibly additional students from other overcrowded elementary schools. He said the expansion would raise Riverfield's bricks-and-mortar capacity to 501 students, which is 102 students more than its 399-student capacity without portable classrooms. The school, as of June 1, had 452 students.

"The student population isn't going to be going down in that area," Mitola said, adding that Riverfield School serves families living from Oldfield Road south of the Post Road to the area of upper Mill Plain Road.

"It's a substantial district. You're always going to have kids there and the work needs to be done."

Enrollment projections from MGT of America, Inc. in Olympia, Wash., which were released last December, projected Riverfield's enrollment as declining to 429 students in the 2011-12 school year and 423 students in the 2012-13 school year. But Riverfield's enrollment is then projected to rise to 428 in 2013-14, 433 in 2014-15 and 439 in 2015-16.

Farther out, MGT projects Riverfield's enrollment as rising from 453 students in 2016-17 to 509 students in 2020-21.

Riverfield's expansion and renovation was included in the Board of Education's recently-adopted Long Range Facilities Plan, which covers work at town schools over the next four fiscal years. The plan calls for Riverfield to be done in the fiscal year that starts July 1, and Iacono said that remains the goal.

Riverfield School, built in 1959 and last renovated in 2000, has 22 permanent classrooms and five portable classrooms, two of which date to 2009 and three of which date to 2004, according to the Long Range Facilities Plan.

Riverfield's expansion and renovation would include:

* Building an addition to eliminate portable classrooms.

* Bringing the school up to current building, life safety and fire codes.

* Upgrades to "core facilities," such as the library, cafeteria and all-purpose room.

* Installing a new fire sprinkler system.

* Installing a new HVAC fresh air and air conditioning system.

* Installing additional lockers.

* Expanding the kitchen.

* Expanding the parking lot.

* Adding storage rooms for custodial and staff and school materials.

* Improving security.

A space analysis that the school board had done for the town's 11 elementary schools identified Riverfield as being short 10 classrooms. The shortages included:

* Three regular classrooms now in portables (3 classrooms)

* Music and instrumental music in portables (2 classrooms)

* Gifted and Spanish taught in the library's server room (0.5 classroom)

* Language Arts taught in a staff lunch room (0.25 classroom)

* A shortage of instructional space for special education (0.5 classroom)

* A social worker now in a book room (0.25 classroom)

* No dedicated space for Spanish and occupational and physical therapy (0.75 classroom)

* Two gym classes that have to be held at the same time (1.5 classroom)

* A staff lunch and work room now in a classroom (1 classroom)

First Selectman Michael Tetreau wasn't available early Friday afternoon to offer his initial thoughts on Riverfield's expansion and renovation, which is being proposed at a time when some residents are eyeing school board requests for money with a skeptical eye and voicing concern over the bad economy.

Iacono stressed that the estimated $9.1 million cost of Riverfield's expansion and renovation was only a preliminary estimate because an architect hadn't looked at the school yet.

A funding request for Riverfield's expansion and renovation would require approvals from the town's Board of Selectmen, Board of Finance and Representative Town Meeting before work could begin.

The school board's meeting is at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday in the Education Center, 501 Kings Highway East.