School plan takes shape

SCARBOROUGH — After eight months of work by a 41-person ad hoc committee, the cost of replacing Scarborough’s outdated Wentworth Intermediate School has begun to take shape.

At a special School Board meeting June 23, a floor plan for the new building was unveiled by Wentworth Principal Anne-Mayre Dexter, Building Committee Chairman Paul Koziell, and Dan Cecil, an architect from Portland-based Harriman Associates.

The Wentworth Building Committee had expected to put a price tag on the new building at its June 27 meeting. However, on Tuesday, Koziell said that session had been canceled.

“We decided that, rather than rush it, since the architect still hadn’t fixed a number, to cancel that meeting,” he said. “So, as far as a cost estimate goes, where still in a holding pattern.“

What is certain, says Koziell, is that the project will ring in at less than the $38.5 million put forth in 2006. Voters killed that proposal, with 61 percent of residents opposed. At this time, a cost estimate is expected to top the agenda at the next building committee meeting, which gets under way at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, July 6, at the Wentworth school.

Dexter says deficiencies in the existing building include the presence of asbestos and mold, a leaky roof, a lack of sprinklers and high CO2 levels due to poor ventilation in the 24 portable classrooms tacked on to the complex over the years.

On top of that, the main building – built in 1962 as a junior high – is not size-appropriate for its present-day population. There are just eight bathroom stalls for Wentworth’s 775 students (four, each, for boys and girls) making for a long trek on little legs from some corners of the building.

Assistant Superintendent Jo Anne Sizemore says Scarborough has spent $1.3 million since 2006 on a host of small fixes at the school, most recently on window replacement. It faces as much as $2.5 million in additional maintenance costs over the next three years to address other, ongoing concerns, she said.

“The existing building is just not well made,” said Cecil.

“We’ve done a lot of research, and looked for materials that will not wind us up in the position we are currently in,” said Kristen Schuler, chairwoman of the interiors subcommittee.

Should citizens let the town sell bonds to finance a new school (a Nov. 8 vote is expected), construction will begin next spring. If all goes according to plan, the existing structure would be torn down over the summer of 2014 (making room for a 286-space parking lot) and students would take their seats in the new building that fall.

But, as the building committee enters the last few weeks before its planned July 20 final presentation to town councilors, hard choices are being made. Already, an indoor pole-vault apparatus has been cut, saving $1.5 million. That’s been the largest, but probably not the last cut, says Koziell.

“The plan you are looking at is by no means final,” he cautioned school board members June 23. “It is still developing and changing and, frankly, will continue to do so for some time to come.

“While it certainly will not get any larger, it may get smaller as we continue to review the space requirements for the building’s educational and programming needs,” said Koziell.

A primary factor in reining in costs, despite a half-decade’s worth of inflation since the last go at a new intermediate school, is the smaller scope of the project. As drafted, the new Wentworth plan calls for 120,870 square feet on the first floor and 51,740 square feet on the second. Combined, that’s 12,100 square feet, and six classrooms, smaller than the 2006 proposal.

According to Cecil, he was able to use the most recent census data to rein in the building, now designed to house 800 students. The 2006 proposal was for 900.

“No one can believe the population over time won’t grow in Scarborough,” said Cecil. “In fact, I find it inconceivable. But, if you look at the latest projections, it is a lower slope than before.

“The [building] committee was looking for a way to demonstrate cost effectiveness to the community,” he said. “So, the first thing we did was lop off six classrooms.”

The new plan has 40 classrooms, each 800 square feet in size, with 20 on each floor. The building will be orientated on a north-south axis, placed slightly southwest of the existing building, to make maximum use of sunshine, and minimum use of indoor lights.

"If you look at your energy bill, about half of that cost is just the artificial light in your building, so anything you can do to increase natural light, you should do," said Cecil.

Aiding the “daylight harvest” is an enclosed courtyard separating the building’s two educational wings, each of which will have 20 classrooms (10 up, and 10 down), two “team gathering” areas, and two labs for specialized STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) instruction. One of these rooms, referred to by Cecil jokingly as “the dirtiest room in the building,” will be a garden lab.

Under extensive questioning from school board member John Cole, Cecil admitted there is no landscape plan for the courtyard. Its sole function is to allow sunlight to reach both sides of each wing, he said.

The classroom wings will be joined on the south side of the courtyard by a “bar” of rooms for teachers and for specialized instruction, including English as a second language, foreign language, gifted & talented, life skills, literacy, math and speech pathology.

On the north side of the courtyard, the classroom wings will be joined by administrative offices, art rooms and the library, as well as by a special education testing room that will serve the entire district.

A long corridor stretching the width of the building will separate the academic side from what planners call the “community side.” This section, open to occasional use by the public, features a 10,100-square-foot gym and a 6,300-square-foot cafeteria, joined by a stage, which will be accessible from either side.

These areas are significantly reduced from the earlier version put to voters.

“We’ve tried to make the building as compact as possible but still preserve its use for a variety of community functions,” said Cecil.

To aid visibility from the office, this section of the building – where the gym, cafeteria and library meet the reception area’s security foyer – will feature “a lot more glass walls than you normally see,” said Cecil.

Also on that side of the building will be band rooms, the boilers, storage areas and the kitchen, which will provide meals to all elementary schools in town, as well as a 2,250 square feet reserved for Scarborough’s Community Services program.

Throughout the building a concrete wainscot as high as a fifth-grader can reach will be used to make walls “as bullet proof as possible,” says Cecil.

Described as “an incredible building from a life-safety standpoint,” the new Wentworth would employ a “key-card” security system to enter its academic wing, which administrators will be able to “lock-down” from the public side, Cecil said. In addition, surveillance cameras will be placed at multiple exterior locations, while lighting will be provided by, at most recent count, 61 poles. In the future, Wentworth will share access to Route 114 with the middle school. The area now used by most people as the site’s primary entrance will be gated off from the main road and turned over to parking for nearby athletic fields.

As designed, the building will make use of several “green building” techniques, including a geo-thermal setup for heating and cooling.

“The building we’ve put before you is a much more efficient use of space than the existing school,” said Koziell. “What we have here is a smart design.

“But I want to caution everybody,” he added. “There is a lot of hard work that is still ahead of us. We are not done.”