Hearing on School Injunction Request Likely Feb. 10

A court hearing on Mark Corcoran's request for a temporary injunction to stop the expansion of Fairfield Woods Middle School likely will take place Feb. 10, Town Attorney Richard Saxl said Tuesday.

Saxl, who appeared in Bridgeport Superior Court Tuesday on Corcoran's lawsuit against the town, said the hearing next month would focus only on Corcoran's request for the temporary injunction and not on the other two counts in the lawsuit, which challenge the Town Plan and Zoning Commission's Dec. 14 decision to amend its regulations to allow the expansion to go forward and its decision to approve the expansion. Saxl said the town would proceed with the project in the interim.

Meanwhile, Hilary Plesser, a buyer in the town's Purchasing Department, said Tuesday that the town had yet to solicit bids yet for construction. The demolition of four classrooms at the school, to make way for 17 new classrooms, already has taken place.

The $24.2 million project involves building 17 classrooms, a 600-seat auditorium and an auxiliary gymnasium and also calls for expanding the cafeteria.

Corcoran, who lives on Fairfield Woods Road, mostly objects in the lawsuit to the auditorium and says the project may be acceptable to him if the auditorium is not built.

The Fairfield Woods Building Committee is trying to complete construction of the 17 classrooms by the first week of September to accommodate a projected enrollment of 755 students in the 2011-12 school year. Fairfield Woods now has 668 students and its capacity, now 650, would increase to 840 after the expansion is finished.

The 87 extra students projected in the Fairfield Woods Road middle school in 2011-12 are due to a middle school feeder plan adopted by the Board of Education in September that is designed to fill the extra capacity that the school is scheduled to have.