Board of Education members are so anxious to get a building proposal before voters in December that they may have to hold off on incorporating solar energy design into the project as had been discussed.

The board on Monday continued its discussion of the project, which is intended to make upgrades at the middle school and high school.

The proposal also includes renovating science and technology classrooms and enclosing the open library at the middle school, renovating technology classrooms at the high school and renovating athletic fields or adding artificial turf. In response to feedback it heard from school officials last month, the district is also likely to tackle expanding the high school library and improving the noisy heating and cooling system that makes it difficult to hear inside the building.

Board member Pam Carbone said there were about four meetings left before the board had to finish its proposal in order to give a 45-day public notice before a planned Dec. 2 vote. She said the board should put off any discussion of solar energy into a future phase of the project.

“I feel we’ve got to move,” she said.

The board had still not received updated estimates of how much it would cost to incorporate solar panels into the school roofs, how much electricity it could generate and how much that could save in costs.

Superintendent Susan Swartz said she has not heard from a representative at General Electric she had been talking with about getting updated solar cost estimates.

Board member Ben Conlon has been a proponent of exploring solar energy in this project. He said the board should wait to get these cost estimates before acting.
“How can we make that decision if we don’t have the numbers in front of us?” he asked.

He said another factor is the board may be able to get more state aid for a project that included a solar energy component and this would help offset costs of the project that are not eligible for aid, like the athletic fields.

New board member Brian McCann agreed that the project should move forward. “You could talk this thing to death,” he said.

Though it did not take a vote, the board informally agreed to set deadline of collecting all the necessary information by the end of August and then deciding to move forward with a small pilot project for solar energy. If it does not have the information, it will forgo the solar component until a future building project. Also, the board has not finished its discussion of how to renovate the fields and whether to use artificial turf, which the district’s administration supports. It is waiting on updated cost figures from its consultant.

Originally, the cost estimates for the entire building proposal were about $12.7 million. However, this did not include work on the high school library and other work.

In other business, the board gave its blessing for the middle and high school teachers to have four, two-hour blocks during the 2008-09 school year where they would engage in professional development. Two of the sessions would take place on scheduled superintendent’s conference days and the other two would take place during regular school days in the fall and spring.

The plan is either to have students come in two hours late or leave two hours early on those days for the teacher workshops.

Joseph Kavanaugh, director of curriculum and instruction, said there are a lot of ongoing teacher development and training issues and he frequently has to pull teachers out of the classroom and use substitutes.