Mill Hill School Remains In the Cold

The Board of Education Tuesday night approved a four-year facilities plan for the public schools, but not before rejecting an attempt to add a renovation at Mill Hill School, which is one of the most overcrowded elementary schools in the district.

School board member Paul Fattibene had wanted to add a roughly $12.7 million renovation and expansion at Mill Hill School in the 2013-14 fiscal year, and to bump a proposed $9 million renovation and expansion at Riverfield School to the 2012-13 fiscal year, but both of Fattibene's motions failed.

The motion to add Mill Hill School had the closest vote, being defeated on a 4-4 tally, with Fattibene, school board Secretary Stacey Zahn and school board members Sue Brand and Tim Kery in favor, and school board Chairman John Mitola, board Vice Chairman Pam Iacono and board members Perry Liu and Catherine Albin opposed. Board member Sue Dow wasn't at the meeting.

Fattibene said Mill Hill was one of the district's older elementary schools, has had portable classrooms "for quite some time" and was identified in a consultant's report as the elementary school with the greatest space deficiency. "I believe there is a need there, and there certainly on the plan should be some accommodation for Mill Hill," he said.

Some work is planned at Mill Hill School over the next four fiscal years, such as installing a new ceiling and lights for $262,500 in 2012-13; new bathrooms for $289,406 in 2013-14; and a minor roof replacement for $461,614 in 2014-15. But the overall $1 million worth of work falls far short of the $9 million worth of work planned in the renovation and expansion of Riverfield School in the next fiscal year, which starts July 1, and the $10 million expansion and renovation of Holland Hill School in 2014-15.

Fattibene noted that the Board of Selectmen about six weeks ago had been reluctant to pay for new ceilings and lights at Mill Hill School when a major renovation to the school was planned on the horizon, and the selectmen ultimately defeated that funding request.

By moving Riverfield's expansion and renovation to 2012-13, adding a major renovation at Mill Hill in 2013-14 and leaving the proposed expansion and renovation of Holland Hill in 2014-15, the school board could concentrate on finishing the $24.2 million expansion and renovation of Fairfield Woods Middle School in 2011-12 and then could concentrate on one major expansion and renovation at an elementary school over the following three fiscal years, Fattibene said.

But adding the roughly $12.7 million project at Mill Hill to the Facilities Plan would cause the overall gross cost of the four-year plan to rise from $42.4 million to $55.1 million, not including anticipated state reimbursements, and Iacono said town boards, which cut $2.8 million from the school board's proposed operating budget in 2011-12, would never agree to that.

Thomas Cullen, the school district's director of operations, also indicated that work at Mill Hill School was around $15.7 million because the $1 million in smaller-scale improvements in the Facilities Plan weren't part of the larger renovation.

"We simply cannot afford it," Iacono said. "The town doesn't have the stomach for it. I think it's going to bring down other projects we desperately need."

Iacono also wasn't in favor of pushing Riverfield School's proposed expansion and renovation into the 2012-13 fiscal year, and that motion failed on a 6-2 vote, with Fattibene and Liu in favor and everyone else against.

Liu said he didn't want to vote on the Facilities Plan Tuesday night because he believed the board needed to investigate whether a redistricting at the high school level could better balance projected populations in the two high schools, rather than spending money on adding classrooms and cafeteria space in the schools. Fairfield Ludlowe High School is due to receive six more classrooms, while Fairfield Warde High School would receive two.

"Without looking at whether redistricting is part of the equation is, for lack of a better word, foolish," Liu said. "To not be able to have this as concrete information, whether it works for us or doesn't work for us, leaves us in a bad situation."

Liu also said that projects in the Facilities Plan should be prioritized within each of the next four fiscal years. He said he didn't want town bodies "telling us what should be cut and what shouldn't be cut."

Liu said he also had only three business days to look over the revised Facilities Plan.

But Kery said he didn't see the value in dissecting the plan any further and that former First Selectman Ken Flatto had wanted the Board of Education to spend $27 million on capital projects over the next four fiscal years. Kery added that the board had to find 500 additional seats at the high school level - 400 at Ludlowe High and 100 at Warde High - and that the 500-seat shortage would exist regardless of how it was distributed. "I don't see there being a big change in information we've been looking at for the last 18 months," he said.

Kery was referring to work done by a Board of Education subcommittee to come up with a new middle school feeder plan due to the expansion of Fairfield Woods Middle School, which the board adopted in September. Kery was chairman of the subcommittee and Liu was a subcommittee member, and one of the flaws identified with the adopted middle school feeder plan was the overcrowding that would result at Ludlowe High in future years.

On Tuesday night, Liu said, "There were a lot of ideas and opinions," emphasizing the word "opinions," "but we never came to a conclusion about redistricting at the high schools."

Dorene Herron, one of two members of the public to speak about the Facilities Plan, said she didn't want the school board to postpone its vote. She said a motion to prioritize projects in each of the fiscal years had failed at a previous school board meeting and that the Facilities Plan was "a working document."

Liu's motion to postpone the vote to May 24 failed on a 6-2 vote, with Liu and Brand casting the only votes in favor.

Kathryn Engle of Mill Hill Terrace asked the school board to consider a redistricting that affected Mill Hill School to reduce enrollment at the school. "The school is bursting at the seams. There's nowhere for music, we're probably going to lose an art classroom next year," she said.