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The Board of Selectmen gave its approval to the $11.6 million project at a special meeting Wednesday. The Board of Finance and Representative Town Meeting are scheduled to discuss the plan next month.
The proposed project would add two science labs and four all-purpose classrooms to the school, expand its cafeteria and renovate the teacher and senior lounges. It would also replace the school’s PCB-contaminated windows and upgrade the 22-year-old roof to ward off leaks.
“This project needs to happen now, and it needs to continue moving,” Selectman Cristin McCarthy-Vahey said Wednesday. “These are urgent needs for everybody in the building.”
Enrollment is expected to rise at both Fairfield high schools in the next few years, but more so at Ludlowe. The school’s ideal capacity is 1,400 students, but its enrollment is predicted to be more than 1,700 by 2015.
Fairfield Warde has the same capacity, and is projected to have more than 1,500 students at the same time.
Some residents asked the Board of Education why the expansion was needed at Ludlowe, as opposed to renovating Warde. Fairfield Warde currently houses the Early Childhood Center, and residents asked at previous board meetings why the town couldn’t move the ECC and rearrange its high school districts.
Superintendent David Title offered estimates to the selectmen Wednesday that said a renovation of Fairfield Warde and building a new ECC would cost $11 million, nearly the cost of the entire Ludlowe project. He also noted that the Ludlowe renovation also includes the window and roof replacement, which would still need to be done.
“The least expensive option before you is the project that we have,” Title told the board Wednesday.
School officials also hope that adding science labs and expanding the cafeteria would also allow the district to change its high school scheduling policy. Currently students at both high schools can opt to give up a dedicated lunch period to take eight classes, with a pass to eat in class.
The Board of Education is studying plans to change to a system that would give each student a dedicated lunch period, while still allowing them to take the same courseload. But Ludlowe’s current cafeteria would not be able to handle lunch waves of that size, Title said.
If approved by the finance board and RTM, the Fairfield Ludlowe renovation would start next summer.
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