The Onteora school district plans a voter referendum next May on $14.97 million in capital projects. Costs estimated in 2021 need to be reviewed and updated. The projects won’t go out to bid until 2027.
“Prior to any designs, projects have to be approved by the voters,” explained assistant superintendent for business Monica LaClair. “After the approval, then it gets submitted to the [state] office of facilities planning. Currently, there is an 18-to-20-week timeline for architectural review, and 30 to 32 weeks for engineering review — and those are consecutive. So if you take the highest number of both, you’re talking a year. I will tell you that hasn’t always been the case. It has gotten worse. They are having staffing issues. There are a lot of projects in the pipeline, mostly backlogged because of the Covid relief money.”
As it stands now, around $9.17 million in projects will be spent at the middle/high school, $4.2 million at the Woodstock Elementary School and $1.596 million at the Bennett School.
LaClair said work still needed to be done on the buildings regardless of reconfiguration.
The school board voted last year to close the Phoenicia Elementary School due to steady enrollment declines. The next goal is creating a centralized campus in Boiceville by 2028, which would involve closing the Woodstock school. Extensive renovations at Bennett would be needed to accommodate all the district’s elementary students. Such a change will require voter approval of a separate major bond.
Trustee Clark Goodrich noted the importance of separating work that needed to be done for a central campus from work on those improvements. “When things are all mixed together, you know, in trying to figure out whether it’s going to be fiscally responsible to do a centralized campus and close Woodstock,” he said, “if that’s mixed together with other items, it’s going to be hard for me as a trustee to figure that out.”
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