The changes would include an addition to the high school and a move of middle-schoolers.
SOUTHWICK – Education officials are considering a reconfiguration of schools that would create a regional junior/senior high school and convert the middle school into a facility that would house grades three through six.
In addition, a three-town regionalization that would add Granville to the Southwick-Tolland Regional School District would raise the state’s reimbursement rate on a building project up to six percentage points.
“This is a big opportunity for you,” said Jonathan F. Winikur, of Strategic Building Solutions from Old Saybrook, Conn.
Calling the high school the “flagship” of the town’s three schools, Winikur told School Committee members at a recent meeting that with an enrollment of 566 students, the building is currently beyond its 470-student maximum capacity.
“It has a severely undersized administration office and the sciences area is severely lacking,” he said. “The main entrance does not suggest this is where you go.”
Constructing “a significant addition” to the high school that was originally built in 1971 and reconfiguring it to include a middle school, Winikur added, would create “the best of both worlds and focuses the majority of new construction at one site.”
The proposed 58,000-square-foot addition would be constructed to the back of the building in a horseshoe design while the rest of the school would be modernized and renovated to meet the accessibility standards established by the Americans with Disabilities Act.
The junior/senior high school proposal was well received by town and school officials who noted that the configuration would provide a new crop of junior high school students with additional athletic and foreign language study opportunities.
High school principal Pamela Hunter said she would like to see the team concept currently employed for students at Powder Mill Middle School remain intact.
“If the community goes for it, we would keep the team concept in the junior high school,” she said.
Members of the district’s school building committee favored the addition proposal that would allow students in grades seven and eight to move to the high school.
In the plan, Powder Mill Middle School would house students in grades three through six, and Woodland Elementary would serve children from pre-kindergarten through grade two.
Once a plan has been recommended, Winikur said, the project will move on to the schematic design phase and cost estimates can then be developed.
District Schools Superintendent John D. Barry said he hopes to bring a recommendation forward to member communities in the fall.