New School Plan: Lower Price Tag, Classrooms Cut Half the size and two-thirds the cost

Expanding East Hampton's three public schools was the subject once again on Tuesday at a meeting of the school board, which hopes to bring a bond proposal to a vote in the spring.

The project has been at the forefront of the board's agenda since a proposed $90 million plan failed in a referendum last June. Under that proposal, a new middle school would have been built next to the high school, which would have been expanded, and the old middle school would have been renovated to use for district offices and fourth and fifth-grade classrooms.

Concern over the price of expansion led the board to rethink the project over the summer and fall.

The new plan, which would cost $66 million if it were built today, would add 16,485 square feet in new classrooms and a cafeteria to the John M. Marshall Elementary School, renovate the middle school, and build an addition on the north side of the high school. The total construction would add about 100,000 square feet to East Hampton schools, about half of what was included under the previous plan, which added almost 190,000 square feet.

The fifth graders now at the middle school would move to John Marshall, eliminating the need to hold classes in the basement. East Hampton administrators believe the state will eventually forbid using basements for instructional space.

To save money, according to Raymond Gualtieri, the district superintendent, the new proposal cut 12 classrooms that would have been built on the back of the high school.

The new proposal would alleviate overcrowding but would not give all the teachers their own classrooms, a consideration that had been addressed in the previous plan. "It wasn't our choice to cut the ribbon and give the teachers carts" to help them commute from room to room, Dr. Gualtieri said.

James Amaden, a school board member, said the project would cost around $66 million today. Victor Canseco of Sandpebble Builders is calculating the projected price of construction with inflation rates, Dr. Gualtieri said on Tuesday.

If a referendum passes in the spring, construction on the three schools would last through 2012.

"I'm very happy with how this project looks," said Mr. Amaden, adding, however, "I still think that the $89 million plan was our best step forward."

The board voted on Tuesday to begin a traffic impact study at John Marshall in preparation for a possible expansion.

Board members had initially hoped to bring another referendum to voters as soon as this winter. Those plans were delayed, however, when the board decided to go forth with an expansion at John Marshall, which had not been included in the prior plans.

Even if a spring referendum passes, the immediate need for more room has forced the district to order more portable classrooms for the high school and John Marshall. The high school already had leased 10 portable classrooms - four for district offices, and six at the high school.

At Tuesday's meeting the board resolved to lease four more portables for the high school. Dr. Gualtieri said the district will also need 10 portable classrooms for the elementary school, "whether or not the referendum passes," to house the fifth-grade classes that would be moving from the middle school

A three-year lease for each trailer costs $300,000.

"If my math is correct, that means we're going to have to lease 24 trailers over three years. That's $7.2 million in trailers," said Mr. Amaden. "That's a lot of money on an asset that's deteriorating and depreciating rapidly."

"We're going to be educating children in a community with $7 ice cream cones and $12 hamburgers in trailers," said Laura Anker Grossman, a board member.