SAU 8 Concord School Board Holds Yet Another Middle School Hearing

CONCORD, NH — The Concord School District SAU 8 Board of Education will hold yet another public hearing on Wednesday night to consider building a new middle school at the current Rundlett Middle School site.

The hearing will be held at 6 p.m. in the Christa McAuliffe Auditorium at Concord High School.

The board was presented with timelines and costs during a Jan. 15 meeting (view the documents posted here). After the meeting, the board approved a motion to hold a hearing on building a new school at the current site and is asking for more public comment.

The estimated cost of the building is $164,623,927, not including state aid or interest on the debt.

If approved on Wednesday, more studies specific to the site need to be conducted, a schematic design and design development completed, and the board would still need to approve the final proposed costs and the authority for the district to bond the project.

Concord TV broadcast the previous meeting on Jan. 15.

Public comment is also being accepted at info@sau8.org.

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Several pieces of information were missing from the presentations, including financials.

One is state aid.

The district has already been approved for around 40 percent in school building aid, initially about $70.5 million based on a 2022 plan to spend around $176 million — or about double the cost from a few years ago. At $165 million, state aid could be as high as $66 million, which brings the principal to around $99 million. Business Administrator Jack Dunn has estimated the district would be able to get loans of between 4 and 4.5 percent — bringing interest payments to around $65 million to $75 million.

This brings the final total cost of the new middle school to between $230 million to $240 million.

The plan also proposes knocking down the entire school, even though a third of the building is only 35 years old and perfectly fine. In fact, Concord School District taxpayers are still paying off previous bonding on the middle school and previous debt services since the district never lowered rates and, instead, banked money into reserves, preserving artificially high property tax rates.

Prior school boards also promised taxpayers there would be no new middle school project until the $90.8 million elementary school consolidation plan was completely paid off, which will not occur until 2041.

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