Schools

Evaluating Groton's School Facilities: S.B. Butler Elementary

Improvements Would Cost $9.2 to $10.5 Million

S.B. Butler Elementary School was built in 1952. The school spans 29,878 square feet and currently serves 332 students.

Proposed facility improvements are an estimated $9.2 to $10.5 million investment; but the school is an enigma when it comes to how to apply the state’s renovate-as-new funds.

Previous piecemeal facility work has created a hodge-podge learning environment for Butler students.  Space to fix these infrastructure issues is limited—any improvements made to meet fire and safety regulations and handicapped accessibly needs to be completed within the school’s original framework.

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“You spend all that money to renovate it and then you end up with a school that holds about 350 kids—it’s not all that efficient,” said Wes Greenleaf, director of buildings and grounds at the Groton Public School District. “Efficiency is when you get over 400 to 450. We closed a lot of schools because they were inefficient. They were just too small.”   

Over the last 18 years, the town has closed seven schools due to the precarious balance between operational costs, construction, administration and student population.

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“We hear people say, ‘You’ve got all these buildings, why not just use them?’ It makes no sense to use them,” said Greenleaf. “You’re wasting money.”

One of Butler’s more costly expenses is its steam-heat boiler. Installed in the early 1950s, this cast-iron heating system has been rusting and is leaking at a constant rate. The cost to replace the system, $900,000, is over the threshold for the referendum.

“[Then] you have a brand new, antiquated heating system hooked up to a heating system that is beyond its life expectancy,” said Greenleaf. “All the pipes will continue to fail and at an increasing rate.”

“I think we’re just running out of time,” Greenleaf said in a July board of education meeting, of the boiler’s life expectancy, “[and] I don’t think there are many options to this.”

The school also needs electrical improvements.

“[This] building was built in a day when the biggest draw you had, other than lights, were film strip projectors,” said Greenleaf. “The electrical infrastructure system is way undersized. [It] needs to be replaced; it’s as simple as that.”

Adding electrical services is costly. Pleasant Valley Elementary School spent $20,000 expanding service to accommodate air conditioning.

Adding another air conditioner otherwise can overload circuit breakers.

“This year, I think we lost six or seven educational days due to heat,” Superintendent Paul Kadri said of the need for air conditioning at a Groton school board meeting in July. “It directly impacted our educational environment.”

Overloaded circuits also make it difficult for the district to employ new, technology-driven curriculum.

Security is also a concern at S.B. Butler. As with conditions at Fitch Middle School, limited space at Butler has created the need for temporary classrooms. Access to and from these units requires that doors to the main building of the school remain open throughout the day.

“There’s nobody to watch these kids from the time they leave that door to this door,” said Greenleaf. “. . .To bring a person in to supervise them, the expense would be too much.”

The structure of the school is another concern, he said. Constant moisture plagues reinforcing beams located in the school’s storage room.

“This was actually a shooting range in the days before, when people didn’t understand the problems of lead,” said Greenleaf, of Butler’s storage room. “It was a shooting range for Pfizer, EB and the town police. There was so much lead here that we couldn’t abate it. So what we did is we opted to do encapsulation. We poured six inches of concrete on top of it to separate the lead from contaminated soil.”

Facility maintenance crews test the room to ensure that lead is not escaping. Still, if the area is ever demolished or under heavy construction, funds would need to be reserved for lead abatement.

Accessibility is also an issue. Handicap ramps require an inch of elevation for every twelve inches of ramp distance and a platform or resting area every 20 feet. Ramps at Butler are too steep and void of rest areas—a necessary evil given what little space the school has for development.

Visual and audible fire alarms have been affixed throughout the building.

“Here’s an alarm with a visual, which meets a code from about twenty years ago,” said Greenleaf, pointing to an alarm located near the school’s full-service kitchen. “Those are in the hall. Now, if you got something noisy going on in the classroom, you don’t always hear it. You compensate by [checking] rooms on the way out, but precious moments are lost.”


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