Bristol's $34M School Opening Soon

While Reiter is shuttered, and Grandview and the high school are serving temporary duty, lets think about "what if"...

$34M school expected to be completed by spring
Posted in News on Tuesday, December 23rd, 2008 at 4:17 pm by Joan Hellyer

The price tag for Bristol’s new pre-kindergarten through eighth-grade school is pushing $34 million thanks to a 2007 soil remediation delay, change orders and contractor claims, officials said.

That’s almost $4 million more than originally estimated when construction got underway in late 2006, and about $800,000 more than the most previous estimate on the project. The school board plans to use bond money and about $1.7 million from the district’s capital reserve fund to cover all the expenses, said Joseph Roe, Bristol’s business manager.

The building, located at 450 Beaver Street adjacent to Warren Snyder-John Girotti Elementary School, is designed to serve approximately 1,110 students, district officials said.

It was supposed to open in September, but various delays, including the removal of about 2,000 tons of urban fill last year, have forced officials to push its scheduled opening to Sept. 2009.

Construction on the expansive, two-story brick building with a red and gray color scheme is about 80 percent complete, said Angelo Rago, the district’s project representative, during a tour of the school last week.

The building’s roof, structural supports, and heating and cooling systems are in place. Crews are now working on the school’s interior. The project should be finished by the spring, Rago said.

The school includes about 70 classrooms spread across a couple different floors and wings to separate the different age groups of the students, he said. The early learning center is positioned on the west side of the building and includes a separate entrance for pre-kindergarten and kindergarten students.

The first floor of the classroom wing on the building’s east side will be for first- through fifth-grade students and the wing’s second floor will be for middle school-aged students, said Rago and Snyder-Girotti Principal Rosemary Parmigiani during the tour. Special education classes will be spread throughout the building.

The school includes a cafeteria, gymnasium and auditorium, and not just one space for all three, as is the case at the old Snyder-Girotti.

“Now we’ll be able to have three events going on at the same time,” Parmigiani said. “It’s something we didn’t have before.”

The school also includes a family and consumer science room and a state-of-the-art media center and library.

Along the tour, Principal Parmigiani, Rago, and John D’Angelo, the school board’s vice president, repeatedly pointed out areas designated for storage. “That’s because we don’t have any room now,” Parmigiani said.

At this point in the project, district officials don’t foresee any major problems developing, D’Angelo said.

“But we remain vigilant, because we want to stay on top of the [project’s] expenses,” he said.