Bristol Elementary suspends classes to address building issues, days after vote to close Danbury Elementary

BRISTOL — Recognizing the blows recent budget decisions have dealt on residents of the Newfound Area School District, School Board Chair Melissa Suckling allowed an unruly audience to express their views, and interrupt proceedings, as the board discussed its path forward on March 23.

During the meeting, audience members shouted out questions. The board largely discussed building repairs and class consolidation.

In the public comment period, residents charged the board with a lack of transparency in dealing with a default budget. The school board, in January, rejected closing the Danbury Elementary School to save money, but when faced with a choice between the closure and preserving academic and extracurricular programs, the board decided on March 16, that displacing 73 students was preferable to impacting the hundreds of students who otherwise would be affected.

The March 23 meeting focused on another problem: An inspection of Bristol Elementary School revealed structural problems that need to be addressed as soon as possible. While the findings did not indicate imminent failure, safety concerns prompted the cancellation of classes on March 24, to give school leaders a chance to work out a plan to move students out of the affected areas.

Steve Goan, a structural engineer who inspected the building, said a major concern lies around the mortise and tenon joints in support beams which are pulling apart. He said the tenon rail fits into a mortise hole cut into the beam.

“One of the downfalls of that type of construction is, over time, where you have a joint cut out in the joists, to form the tenon to fit into the mortise and beam, it tends to crack, and wood has grain. It runs horizontally, and causes the crack to run along horizontally,” he said.

The area of major concern, he said, a basement crawl space. A fire door in that area can't be opened, due to the settling of the joists.

“The beam is rotating, and so that rotation has caused the opposite side joists to raise, where you cannot close the fire door properly,” he said. “So, we have an actively moving situation.”

He noted it has separated from the rest of the building, and is not easily accessible in a crawl space. 

The other major concern, he said, is there is significant asbestos in that area, although asbestos has not been found in the rest of the building. One area where asbestos was found was the boiler room; the other is the crawl space.

“Exploration in that area is significantly difficult, and really should not be attempted, until the asbestos is remediated,” he said.

Steven Dunn, of the New Hampshire Fire Marshal’s Office, and Aaron Heath, Bristol’s deputy fire chief, confirmed Goan’s findings, and recommended fixing it as quickly as possible.

Superintendent Paul Hoiriis said he brought it to the school board on Monday, “not only wanting to accelerate the work to be done, but, two, to make a plan to move those classes that are in that part of the building into the other part of the building, as soon as we can. We would just feel better knowing that, until this work is done, why take a chance? So it is our intention, tomorrow, to put together a plan, now that we have some clarification, about relocating the classrooms that are in that building.”

He noted Bristol Elementary is made up of three buildings joined together.

“The work we’re talking about is in this particular building that has the basement, and, like I said, it’s our plan tomorrow to relocate those classes ... until we get this work done.”

A representative of Energy Efficient Investments, Inc., who has been working with the district on building maintenance, proposed addressing the problem in phases, beginning with $50,000 to take care of the most pressing problems.

“What we would want to do is build a temporary bearing wall to shore up those joists, and we would do that as soon as the asbestos is removed, and that would be a good safe fix to get the kids back in the building until this summer, when we could complete the rest of the project,” he said.

The estimated total cost of the project is $300,000.

Because the district is operating under a default budget, financing the work poses a problem. The school board is looking to take money out of the building maintenance expendable trust fund, which requires a public hearing.

The board voted to support the initial $50,000 expenditure, and scheduled a special meeting for at 6 p.m. on Monday, March 30, for a public hearing on using the maintenance trust fund to cover the cost.

During the discussion, some residents in the audience voiced concern about the safety of having students in the building at all until the problems could be addressed. Hoiriis said, after hearing the public’s concerns, he planned to call off school on Tuesday.

“I think administration and facilities and teachers and staff, we need to meet, first thing tomorrow morning, and talk about that relocation out of that part of the building,” Hoiriis said, “because we’re not 100% sure if it’s safe. And until that remediation is done, to wait and have them return to school tomorrow, I’m just not sure that’s a good idea.”

School consolidation

Parents of Danbury students expressed anger at having their local school shut down, and how upset the children were at the prospect of going to larger school.

“It’s sad that some of these kids feel that way. A lot of it, I think, comes off from the parents feeling that way, and the kids can see that. I know that, like, my kid reacts to my emotion. If I was happy about something, like when we moved here, it made it better for him, because I put a positive spin on it. It was big change for him in first grade, when he went from all of his friends that he had in preschool and in kindergarten, and then moved to New Hampton, and had to make new friends. But he did it with ease, because we made sure that he did,” at-large school board member Michele Lang said.

She said declining enrollments and the cost of maintaining so many school buildings makes consolidation necessary.

“It’s not Paul, or our administration,” she said. “It is we are spending so much money on these buildings. Consolidation is going to have to happen; it’s how we do it that’s the best for our children is what we are trying to do up here.”

Much of the discussion centered on whether the middle and high school would need extensive renovations to accommodate the younger children from the elementary schools. Bristol Selectboard member John Miller urged the school board to avoid supporting a larger project than is necessary.

“There’s no way that everybody will be able to stomach recreating lots and lots of different facilities, when a grade maybe has 20 kids, right? There’s going to have to be some balance in all that.”