Facilities Director John Barlow delivered a presentation on the district's Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) to Board of Education (BOE) members at their Tuesday, September 15 meeting.

BOE Chair Alison Plante said this was the group's annual review of the CIP, which is all the large capital projects the district expects to need in its school buildings over the next ten years. The BOE typically reviews the CIP in its first meeting of the school year and then votes on it during its next meeting, according to Plante.

After BOE members vote on it, Plante said they are due to submit the CIP to the Town by the middle of October.

Barlow began by saying his CIP presentation showed the district's priorities for 2028, along with a ten-year facilities outlook from 2028-2037.

At a glance, Barlow said they are looking at a total of $2.87 million for 2028's asks.

Of that number, $2 million is for the planning, design, site evaluation, cost estimating, and related professional services for a new middle school, should the Town authorize a building committee to move the project forward.

Barlow said the project is being proposed to address the approximately $53 million in repairs and improvements for Newtown Middle School identified in the 2024 Facilities Conditions Assessment, the need to provide students with an updated 21st Century learning environment, and the documented capacity constraints at the district's elementary schools.

He emphasized that funding at this stage supports planning and design, and does not represent a commitment to construction.

Barlow said his data depicts a project estimate of about $135 million to construct the new middle school, with $2 million for planning and design.

The Town's process for this, Barlow said, is that this money needs to come through the CIP. Superintendent of Schools Anne Uberti said they met with Finance Director Glenys Salas and First Selectman Bruce Walczak, along with a member of the Building and Site Committee, to talk about this process.

"It is required that, in order to get reimbursement back, we need to have a building committee, and there are certain things that need to happen, but those are going to happen along the way. Because we're approving the CIP before all of that stuff, we do need to put this [into the CIP]," Barlow explained.

Uberti added that, due to the timing of the CIP and because any funding allocation has to be approved by the Legislative Council, Salas advised they put the money into the CIP.

If at some point they were to build a new school, Uberti said they would need money in the 2028 FY to do that work. Uberti added that she and Plante would go to the Legislative Council meeting on September 16 for an expanded presentation. There was expected to be a tri-board meeting on the potential establishment of a building committee, which would explore the construction of a new middle school, the results of which were not available before deadline.

Other Projects

At Newtown High School (NHS), Barlow said there's a need to provide some updates to the building's athletic facilities, specifically a resurfacing of its tennis courts, along with improvements to the lighting and drainage around Blue & Gold Stadium.

"A lot of those drains ... are crumbling, and they've created a tripping hazard," Barlow explained.

Over the years, there has been a small progression of replacing the high school's exterior doors, according to Barlow. He said these are made by a company called Total Door, but that there is only one vendor in the state.

Barlow added that the doors are aged out and are "constantly causing us trouble." There are approximately 14 doors left, and Barlow said that he and his team would like to replace the doors.

"There are some security concerns with those doors, so by replacing them, we're just going to harden our security overall," Barlow explained.

The last thing he noted is the window replacement for the high school's A-Wing. Barlow said that anyone who has driven into the NHS parking lot knows there are a lot of fogged up windows at the end of the building.

He added, "They are insulated glass windows, the seals are broken, and so we would be looking to replace those as well."

Radio Discussion

As this was the first read of the CIP, Barlow said there are some additions his team wants to make, such as the IPSC radio system refresh.

Superintendent of Schools Anne Uberti said that they discussed this at the BOE CIP/Facilities/Finance (CFF) Subcommittee meeting earlier that night. She noted that the district has to replace antennas in order for the school staff's handheld radios to work. These antennas are located in the schools.

Uberti said the essential purpose of these radios is for staff to communicate with other staff. As an example, if there was a student who had some behavioral needs, they might call support to a certain room to the team within the building, and they would respond, according to Uberti.

She said there are other radios that are carried by administrators and members of the district's emergency response teams that not only communicate within the building on a dedicated channel, but they communicate to each building.

"So every building has a channel, and then they also communicate to the emergency operations center, which is who we would communicate with in terms of an emergency, and that could be two-way," Uberti explained.

If somebody was on the loose near the local schools, Uberti said the dispatch emergency operations could notify school staff, and that would go across all of the radios.

The latest estimate to replace the antennas is approximately $170,000, according to Uberti. She said it was in the budget two years ago, but was taken out. Uberti added that they put it back in the budget last year. They ended up taking it out of the budget again with a plan in mind: they could use the non-lapsing fund to pay for the replacement of those antennas, along with those that are well past their expected lifespan.

Additional Radio Discussion

With the new director of safety and security, Jeremy Dexter, joining the district in the past few weeks, Uberti said one of the things she asked him to look into was the many radio complaints they have been receiving.

What they were able to find out through conversations with Dexter, Barlow, and Dennis Colclough, director of technology, is that a lot of the district's radios are aging out. Additionally, Uberti said many of the batteries in those radios are over ten years old.

"So at first, we thought it was just a matter of ordering some additional batteries. Then we realized that the batteries alone could cost around $10,000 to replace, and we would be replacing batteries for radios that are, in some cases, more than ten years old, approaching 15 years old, and are also reaching the end of life," Uberti explained.

She said this started a big discussion, as any type of major radio replacement was not something on their radar.

"They're needed, but we did not have any understanding as to ... the volume of radios that need replacing," Uberti said. "So in talking about it, literally just today, we started wondering if maybe we should consider rolling some kind of radio replacement into the project."

She added it is the same company behind the radios and antennas, and by going through that company, they anticipate the project would meet the $200,000 threshold for the CIP.

Uberti said they could not put it on the CIP yet because they "don't have a good number." The most recent radio inventory was completed in 2024; when they became aware this was an issue last Friday, Uberti said they sent out inventory collection sheets to all of the principals.

"So we are currently in the process of logging all of the radios," she explained. "Once we have that back from them — which we anticipate being able to have by mid-next week — we can tell by the serial numbers that are located on the radios themselves, and then there's also numbers located on the batteries, how old each of those components are."

From there, Uberti said they can get a good estimate on some type of radio replacement. This would be based on the district's needs, as some radios are very new.

The BOE will discuss the radio replacement and whether it is something they should consider adding into the CIP at its next meeting on Tuesday, October 6.

Newtown Continuing Education

BOE member Doria Linnetz asked if there was an update regarding Newtown Continuing Education. Uberti said that was a great question and she probably should have addressed it sooner.

Uberti continued by saying the director of Newtown Continuing Education, Jennifer Arnold, resigned during the summer. She added that they were able to patch together enough support to continue with all of its programming without any interruption.

With Arnold's departure, Uberti said they did some analysis of the position and what is done in the position.

"And one of the things that became clear to us ... is why is the Board of Education running adult recreational programs? We have both a community center and parks and recreation programs. And from what I understand ... it was just really a legacy thing from way back when we didn't have either," Uberti explained.

In turn, she said the BOE worked with Matt Ariniello, the director of Newtown Community Center, to "spin off" all of those recreational activities for adults to him.

Uberti added it made the position very challenging because that person would have to come back at night to meet people at the high school and at odd hours. In addition, some of the programs were also being registered either through Newtown Parks & Recreation or through small business owners, according to Uberti.

"Just very complicated, and not necessarily something that the Board of Ed needs to have their fingers in," Uberti said. "So, that will no longer be."

The Newtown Bee spoke to Ariniello about the transition on the morning of September 15. He said Newtown Community Center has worked collaboratively with the BOE to try to transition some of these programs. Many of these programs, he said, have already started.

"We have taken a variety of the health and wellness and art programming, along with adult programming, that [Newtown Continuing Education] used to offer," Ariniello said. "The BOE had asked if they were interested in any of these programs, and we’re happy to continue to offer these."

Uberti noted that this leaves the BOE with all of its camps, including Summer Music and Art (SMART) Camp, which she said they plan to retain.

Uberti added they are in the process of looking at a different structure for that and potentially eliminating the director position. Many districts in the area utilize stipend positions for directors, according to Uberti.

She said they had two outstanding people leading the programming at Reed Intermediate School and the programming at NHS who are interested in running everything, including the hiring.

Uberti noted they are just trying to figure out if they could also provide administrative support from somebody who is already in central office.

"So we're working on that, but that's the direction that we're thinking," Uberti said.

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Reporter Jenna Visca can be reached at jenna@thebee.com.