After elevated levels of mold were found in the older wing at Nobleboro Central School in March, life at the school has drastically changed.
The mold was remediated days before the start of the new school year, but the wing built in 1956 remains closed until necessary repairs are made.
Now, students inhabit the newer portion of the building, faculty and staff doing whatever they can to make things fit. With the consolidation of space, Principal April Flagg said she is concerned about accommodating increasing class sizes.
“We just want our school back,” Flagg said.
In late July, the Nobleboro School Committee applied for a lease purchase from Androscoggin Bank to acquire funding for the $10,400,000 worth of construction on the older wing. At a Sept. 1 meeting, committee Chair Matt Benner said the lease purchase was denied because the bank was concerned with the school’s “recurring operating deficits” and other financial issues.
The letter from the bank also said representatives spoke with Nobleboro town office staff, who expressed concerns about voters not having the opportunity to vote on the financing for this project, Benner said.
Without the money from the bank, voters now will decide at a special town meeting in October whether the Nobleboro Select Board shall issue general obligation bonds in an amount not exceeding $10,400,000. Benner said the total would cover all anticipated construction and repairs.
According to Benner, a lease purchase is like a line of credit or a credit card. If the lease purchase had been approved, the town could pay back the cost quicker without penalties. Bonds have higher interest rates, he said.
If the bond is approved by voters, the funding will go toward a new roof, new siding, new windows, as well as ditching on the sides of the school so there are places for drainage to avoid moisture from building up again. The plan also includes the installation of new heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems, changes in the boilers, and improvements to the parking lot.
“This all happened because there was no drainage, so the basement flooded and grew mold,” Flagg said. “We all know what happened, but what we need to do now that we’ve fixed it, and we have, it’s gone, but we can’t let it happen again.”
The mold was originally discovered during assessments of the building for planned improvements in March. The school committee hired AOS 93 Facilities Director John Carroll to advise a state of the building, and in the course of his inspections he found several of the school’s air handlers were not functioning and evidence of water intrusion in the basements and bathrooms.
Carroll said he also found “very high” carbon dioxide levels, but none high enough to be a significant health concern.
The higher levels were another indicator of elevated moisture levels, which eventually led to follow-up testing completed by Jeff Preble, a senior mechanical designer from the Turner Group engineering firm based in New Hampshire. In his testing, Preble found high levels of mold.
Mold levels at NCS in the 1956 wing tested at 300-400 parts per cubic meter of air, with basement levels exceeding 1,900. Carroll said the “safe level” is around 90 parts per cubic meter of air.
With the discovery of the mold, NCS conducted two days of remote learning as contractors sealed off the contaminated wing. The closure of that section led to grades 7-8 being temporarily housed at the Kieve Wavus Education in Nobleboro.
The 2026-2027 school year started on Aug. 31 with everyone back at NCS. Without access to the older wing, classrooms have been split by dividers to make more space, faculty bathrooms are used as storage, and the front office is now home to the principal’s and nurse’s offices.
Flagg said she is concerned with how the limitations of the space in the building will affect her staff if the wing is not fixed. With the upcoming middle school class sizes larger than the current ones, she said the space “cannot” work next year.
“At some point, we would really like to give them back their spaces, because that’s how teaching and learning works and we have an exceptional program here,” Flagg said.
Benner described the anticipated work as a “need” not a “want.”
After remediating the mold in the old wing, Benner said the next step is to dig up the foundation to fix the drainage issue that led to the mold in the first place. That work will play into the anticipated construction and changes in the parking lot, which will be done to address the drainage concerns and traffic flow.
Other work includes addressing rotting within the walls from the moisture. Benner said the roof has a remaining lifespan of about five or six years, but the school committee wants to get ahead by including it in this project.
The project also includes the addition of quartz floors, which would eliminate the need for custodial staff to wax the floors in the summer. Benner said instead of working on stripping and waxing the floors, focus can be directed to more cost-effective issues.
Benner said none of the proposed is “extra” and all are necessary repairs that need to be done for safety reasons. By getting the repairs done now, he said the school and taxpayers will save money in the long run.
“We didn’t do this to pretty the school,” Benner said.
If everything goes to plan and the bond is approved by voters, Carroll said the goal is to open the old wing by the beginning of next school year and for the remaining construction projects to span a two and a half year time period.
Beyond just the learning environment, AOS 93 Superintendent Todd Sanders said NCS is a hub for the community.
When addressing comments from residents about the possibility of closing NCS and sending students to Jefferson Village School, Sanders said the other school is not large enough to accommodate over 100 students that would come over. Even if it did, he said it would put more stress on teachers by “maxing out” the size limits of the classrooms.
Next, Benner will meet with the budget committee on Monday, Sept. 21 to discuss the costs.
The Nobleboro Select Board will consider approving the warrant article at its next meeting on Wednesday, Sept. 23.
The goal is to schedule a special town meeting for early October, at which residents can ask questions about the funding and anticipated construction.
“We want our kids to [be] able to come and be safe and be greeted by safe hallways and safe classrooms,” Flagg said.
The Nobleboro School Committee will meet next at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, Oct. 6 at Nobleboro Central School, at 194 Center St. For more information, call 223-3437.