East Granby Board Approves $230,000 to Furnish Renovated Seymour School

After a presentation by an interior designer from Tai Soo Kim Partners, the East Granby Board of Education at its regular meeting Monday approved just under $230,000 for furniture, fixtures and equipment for the refurbished Seymour Elementary School.

The school district is eligible for just over $181,500 in reimbursement from the state for the furniture added to the four new classrooms (including student and teachers chairs, desks, computer tables and storage units), the science and computer labs, administrative area and pupil services suite.

The remaining $47,800 expenditure that is not eligible for reimbursement will go to furnishing the library/media center, which will have new chairs, a magazine rack, and metal shelving with wood end panels and canopy tops that can store up to 8,700 volumes of work, according to interior designer Abi Periyasamy.

The spending measure, which was previously approved by the Building Committee last week and will come from the $11.8 million approved by voters at a referendum, was passed by a 7-1 vote, with Vice Chairman Kirby Huget serving as the lone dissenter.

“I want to make clear that the Building Committee has done great work and made phenomenal strides with the constraints that they have been given,” Huget said. “But this project does not satisfy the educational specifications that we have been charged as a board, so I intend to vote ‘No.’”

Huget elaborated after the meeting, stating that the school board spent years developing educational specifications surrounding the renovation of the elementary schools. One of those specifications was to consolidate the elementary schools into one building.

What has resulted, however, is the “elaborate” refurbishing of Seymore Elementary School and the “piecemeal” renovation of Allgrove, Huget said.

“The townspeople will [eventually] ask us at a public meeting about the deficiencies [of the project], just like they asked us about the deficiencies of the renovation of the high school,” Huget said.

The next step is for the state to approve the $181,500 expenditure so that the board can move forward. The furnishing of the renovated school won't begin until after a particular section is completed.

Porter resigns

In other business, the school board accepted the resignation of Republican member Mark Porter, who was elected to the Board of Finance in the November elections.

“It was a very helpful learning experience,” Porter said after the meeting. “I appreciate working with this group quite a bit.”

Calendar for 2012-13 school year discussed

Finally, the school board discussed the initial reading into the record of the 2012-13 school calendar, which would, among other things, start school the day after Labor Day on Sept. 4, 2012 and have the last day on June 20, 2013.

School board members wrangled over whether to start school earlier, taking into account both the late end date and also the construction at Seymour Elementary School, which might not be completed until early September.

East Granby resident Darcy Walsh, for her part, supported starting school well before Labor Day to avoid issues like the one that faced the school board in light of the recent power outages that required the elimination of four vacation days in February.

Walsh also supported eliminating a February and April break in favor of a one-week vacation in March.

Superintendent of Schools Christine Mahoney said that, while the administration looked into the matter, consolidating the two vacations into one would cause problems for the CIAC athletic schedule.

Walsh disagreed, stating that Granby, which, like East Granby, is in the North Central Connecticut Conference for high school athletics, has just one break in the second half of the year.

No action was taken on the item, but the school board is expected to vote on the matter at its next meeting on Jan. 9, 2012.