MILLINOCKET, Maine — School leaders rejected closing Granite Street School and turning Stearns High School into a K-12 facility because the idea “just didn’t make economic sense,” Superintendent Frank Boynton said Wednesday.
The School Committee voted 5-0 during a meeting Tuesday to reject the idea. An architectural firm and school officials determined the idea would cost about $900,000. But it would save only $268,875 annually if the school system gave up Granite Street School and about $100,754 annually, “in rough numbers,” if events followed their more likely course and the school system needed to pay to maintain the empty building, Boynton said.
“It was very costly. And at this time, the cost of it would take probably 12 years to get back in whatever we would save,” Boynton said Wednesday.
“There just was not the savings over the long haul,” Boynton added. “If there was a ready use for Granite Street and you were in the ballpark of saving a few hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, you might be able to swing it. But that’s not what we are looking at right now.”
SRL Architects of Bethel and Portland found in its 19-page report that modifying Stearns to accept Granite Street students would cost about $386,000. The modifications would include lowering bathroom toilets, urinals and sinks and keeping the youngest students on the first floor of the two-story facility, as state law requires, the report states.
That cost in combination with several one-time or annual costs related to the move or the maintenance of Granite Street made the idea financially unfeasible, Boynton said.
Besides the $386,000, the $900,000 contains several expenses. A partial list includes $200,000 to build a new playground at Stearns and a new canopy over the school’s entrance; $40,000 to move equipment from Granite to Stearns; about $50,000 in loans and interest-rate increases for Granite Street improvement projects; $168,000 in Granite Street maintenance costs; and $20,000 to move the telephone system and other technology from Granite Street to Stearns, Boynton said.
School and town leaders considered the option during the last school year as part of efforts to save money, in response to Great Northern Paper Co. LLC, the town’s largest taxpayer, auctioning its equipment at its Katahdin Avenue industrial park site in June. That loss of $2.3 million in tax revenue would begin to affect the town and schools during the 2015-16 fiscal year.
Town leaders have a goal of cutting $3 million from town and school budgets over the next two years to compensate. Kenneth Smith, the previous superintendent, estimated closing Granite Street would save $202,403. Boynton replaced him July 1. Smith announced his resignation Dec. 4, 2013, saying he would not renew his contract at the end of the fiscal year.
Town leaders also have told the community that government and services would be reshaped to accommodate the town’s declining population. The school system has 500 students, down 32 from the school year that ended in June, Boynton said.
A motion at a school board meeting May 28 to close Granite Street and in September 2014 to fold its population into Stearns, which already accommodates middle school students, failed by a 2-1 vote.
If the situation changes or future boards want to take up the question again, he said, school officials will still have the report available as a reference.
K-12 facilities “work in many towns in the state. But if you look at the building itself, it is really structured for middle, high school and adults. It is not made for the younger students,” Boynton said.