Mansfield Group Pushes For New School

Information via One New School: Yes!

MANSFIELD, CT — Mansfield residents who support the town’s plan to build a new consolidated elementary school have formed a grassroots committee to advocate for the project and to get out the vote for the Nov. 5 referendum.

“Voter turnout is critical to the success of this proposal,” said Steve Bacon, head of the One New School: Yes! political action committee. “Not only must the ‘yes’ votes exceed those opposed, we need about 2,500 ‘yes’ votes to meet the town charter’s required minimum for passage. That can be a difficult hurdle in a municipal election year.”

Earlier this year the Mansfield Town Council authorized a public referendum on whether to spend $50.5 million in state and local funds on a new consolidated elementary school on land behind Southeast Elementary on Route 89. The project would cost local taxpayers an estimated $23 million matched by $27.3 million from the state. The estimated annual tax impact on a home assessed at $245,000 would be $187.

Faced with declining enrollment and three 1950’s-era buildings, school officials want to consolidate all the town’s elementary school pupils into one modern, efficient and cost-effective building that will meet the educational, safety and security standards of the 21st Century.

“The new building will support educational practices that emphasize individualized instruction, physical activity, critical thinking, creativity and collaboration in ways our current buildings simply cannot,” Bacon said.

Plans call for the building to be Connecticut’s first publicly funded net-zero-energy school – meaning it will use passive design, solar and geothermal systems to produce as much energy as it uses, greatly reducing annual operating costs and local carbon emissions. Those energy savings are estimated at about $174,000 annually, an 85% reduction from current energy costs.

After considering many factors and input from the community – including from public information sessions, focus groups and replies to mailings -- school officials concluded that the consolidation was the best option. That decision was affirmed when the state said it would not pay to renovate any of the existing schools which do not meet modern educational standards and which have been deemed by the state to “have outlived their life span.” Simply repairing those buildings – all of which the state says are too large for their respective populations – would cost local taxpayers an estimated $20 million over the next ten years.

“That’s almost as much as an entirely new school built with state help,” Bacon said. “Considering the state’s willingness to pay more than half the cost, the new school will be a sound investment in Mansfield’s future and will help preserve the town’s reputation for educational excellence.”

The proposal has not been without some controversy, since, pending the outcome of the referendum, the Town Council has made no plans for what to do with the Vinton and Goodwin elementary school buildings other than to “mothball” them while seeking public input on their futures. Southeast School would be razed when the new elementary school opened in the fall of 2022.

But even though some parents might prefer it in theory, maintaining, staffing, and operating three aging schools is “financially unsustainable,” school officials have said, especially since state aid will be reduced as student population continues to fall. The expensive practice of keeping two or three schools functioning would likely cut into funds for educational programs and salaries.

Additionally, if the town elected to shoulder the heavy financial burden of renovating any of the schools without state assistance (and to use local funds to pay for the costly asbestos abatement associated with that), the process would require relocation of students and teachers from one school to another over a period of several years.

Parents who live in the Goodwin and Vinton School neighborhoods have also expressed concerns about the loss of their “neighborhood” schools. Aware of that, school officials will be designing a building that groups students into smaller clusters that create a greater sense of community. They are also examining the possibility of creating additional “express” bus routes that will bring students from the northwest side of town to Southeast School in about the same amount of time as they now spend riding.

The One New School: Yes! PAC will be hosting an informational session about the school building referendum on Oct. 6 at 3 p.m. at the First Church of Christ, 549 Storrs Road, Mansfield Center. “We encourage our fellow townspeople to bring questions,” Bacon said. “The first goal of our committee has always been to educate the voters of Mansfield, because we feel the facts supporting this endeavor are persuasive.”