Concord School Board To Discuss New Middle School Project ‘Community Votes’ Wednesday

CONCORD, NH — After tabling a motion on Jan. 6 to rebuild Rundlett Middle School at its current site, the Concord School District Board of Education has booked a special meeting for Wednesday night to discuss the middle school project.

At the meeting, which starts at 6 p.m., the board will discuss next steps for the project. Members will review the middle school project timeline and the costs for both building proposals. Public comment will also be allowed. The meeting will be held in the board room at 38 Liberty St. and aired live on Concord TV.

The meeting is the latest, including some contentious ones, after the voters overwhelmingly approved two new amendments to the charter in November 2024, requiring a vote to move a school and a vote before the district sells property it owns.

The board will consider either the Broken Ground site or the current Rundlett Middle School site. Members will consider estimated timelines for either a “community vote” special election in April or a vote in the November municipal election. According to Janice Bonefant, the Concord City Clerk, a special election is estimated to cost the district around $55,000.

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If a special election is booked for April and it is approved, construction would begin at the Broken Ground site in February 2029 with occupancy slated for Fall 2029, according to documents online. If the RMS site gets the nod, construction would start in July 2029 with occupancy also in Fall 2029. A November election would push the Broken Ground project construction back five months and the RMS site construction by seven months. The district believed the delay with the Broken Ground site could be made up with an occupancy still slated for Fall 2029. In the case of RMS, the November election option had an estimated occupancy date of April 2030.

There was no reason for the discrepancy and differences in the dates and timelines.

In July 2024, the board voted to cap the project’s cost at $152 million while including $8.5 million in contingency costs. However, the district does not include the interest payments in its financials, which pushes the project’s actual costs close to a quarter of a billion dollars.

There appears to be no option to consider making minor repairs to the current building, which is estimated to cost between $4 million and $10 million, depending on the renovation options.

Prior school boards have also promised property taxpayers in Concord that there would be no middle school project until the elementary school consolidation bonding was paid off. That project, which had a final price tag of $90.8 million, will be fully paid off in 2041.

The full middle school project website can be found here.

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