Voters in the Chariho Regional School District will likely be asked to consider a significant bond issue as soon as this Spring, to renovate or replace three of its four elementary schools. The fourth would be closed.
School Superintendent Gina Picard said the schools were “for a very different time,” and each has considerable infrastructure needs, along with not being designed for 21st century learning.
The question is whether to renovate the three schools, at a cost estimated at some $27 million, or to build three new schools, which she says appears to be favored by the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE). The system is in the process of submitting its stage two Necessity of School Construction application.
The regional school district includes the towns of Charlestown, Richmond and Hopkinton. The one school that would be closed, Picard says, is Hope Valley, which is 89 years old. The other schools, to be renovated or replaced, are Richmond (89 years old), Ashaway (56 years old), and Charlestown (70 years old).
The school closure is not related to any new construction, but rather to a declining enrollment.
“We can’t financially support four elementary schools with declining enrollment,” Picard says. Enrollment, she says, has declined by about 1 percent, but the Jacobs Report, which was developed by RIDE a few years ago, says the region’s elementary schools were operating well below capacity.
By eliminating one school, she says, the system will be able to reduce staff through attrition.
The stage two application is part of a five-step process required by RIDE to qualify for a state reimbursement of any bond, which Picard estimates could be 81 percent for Chariho. Regional School systems qualify for additional reimbursement.
Over the last few years, school districts throughout the state have been spending millions of dollars on school construction. Voters have generally approved bond issues for up to hundreds of millions of dollars, with few exceptions.
For a Chariho Regional bond issue to pass, each of the three towns would have to vote in favor of the bond.
Because of inflation and supply chain issues, many school construction projects are well over budget, including in Newport, where the Rogers High School construction project is more than $14 million beyond budget, not including a need to replace automotive and cosmetology facilities.
Here are the five stages of RIDE’s application process, and what they mean:
- Stage I identifies the need for the project through “facility conditions assessments, demographic projections, and provides educational programs for each school facility.”
- Stage II provides a solution for those needs through design documentation that provides cost estimates.
- The first two stages are considered the Necessity of School Construction application.
- Stage III is the design review process, documenting the project’s development and forecasting a project budget.
- Stage IV is the construction phase of the project.
- Stage V is asset management.
