Officials in the Presque Isle-based MSAD 1 fielded questions and unveiled more details Tuesday night about the plan to close the nearly 70-year-old Zippel Elementary School.
More than 100 people packed an informational meeting at Presque Isle Middle School to hear about the proposed closure, which the district announced earlier this month.
If approved, grades 2-5 will move to Presque Isle Middle School and grades 7-8 to Presque Isle High School beginning next school year. The consolidation would save money and open up space to offer full-day kindergarten and special education services for students ages 3-5.
Most of the district’s current open space is in those two buildings, MSAD 1 Superintendent Ben Greenlaw said, including 10 empty classrooms in the high school due to declining enrollment, which is down 8% since 2012.
Without consolidating, there is no space in Pine Street Elementary — which serves students in pre-K through second grade — to accommodate full-day kindergarten and expanded special education services, a responsibility that will shift from the state to districts by 2028 as the Child Development Services program restructures.
“As a district, we’re going to have to reorganize, whether we do it this year or in a couple of years,” Greenlaw said.
Among other concerns, residents questioned why the district opted to close Zippel over Pine Street, which is an older, smaller school.
Greenlaw’s rationale is that Pine Street’s single-story layout and ample green space made it the better option for MSAD 1’s youngest students.
“It just felt like we’d be working really hard to make Zippel like Pine Street. If we’re going to do that, it made no sense for us to move everybody from Pine Street to Zippel.”
Greenlaw fielded several questions from parents wondering how middle school and high school students will be separated.
He displayed a floor plan of the high school that almost entirely contains middle school classrooms on the first floor and high school classrooms on the second floor. Middle school and high school students will also have separate bell schedules, lunch periods and bathrooms, Greenlaw said.
There may be some mingling as students arrive and leave school, but that should not be a big deal, he said.
“It’s not going to be the end of the world if a junior walks down on the first floor of the high school,” Greenlaw said. “We’ll deal with a student who’s not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, but generally speaking we want our students to feel comfortable in the building … If a seventh grader is walking upstairs, it’s O.K. … I think we have a good plan to keep our students separated and keep them safe.”
Greenlaw also detailed another consolidation plan the district considered within the last year that it found to be cost prohibitive.
That plan explored closing Pine Street, making Presque Isle Middle School the district’s new elementary school and using Presque Isle High School for grades 6-12.
In that scenario, Zippel would have remained open to house the district’s administrative offices.
But retrofitting the high school to accommodate six grades would cost upwards of $17 million, Greenlaw said.
Renovations needed to complete the current plan will cost more than $1.3 million, but the district will save an estimated $158,000 annually by closing Zippel after those one-time expenses. It plans to use the savings to fund full-day kindergarten.
MSAD 1 is the only district in Aroostook County and one of the few left in the state that does not offer the program.
The biggest construction will be to transform most of the Zippel playground, which abuts an entrance to the high school, into a new parent pickup and dropoff area. The equipment from that playground will be relocated near an auxiliary soccer field at Presque Isle Middle School.
“The front circle at Presque Isle High School can easily hold about four cars,” Greenlaw joked. “It’s not a good plan in terms of drop-off.”
Other changes will include turning a third of the high school health office, which faces that entrance, into a middle school administrative space.
The district is also exploring ways to create more parking for students, and is considering converting a separate playground behind Zippel into a fourth student parking lot.
There are four more steps before the closure can become official. It first has to be approved by the MSAD 1 Board of Directors in a vote that will take place during a March 17 meeting. It will then go to the commissioner of the Maine Department of Education for approval, followed by a public hearing in Presque Isle in May and a referendum during the June 9 primary election.
If the referendum passes, the district will have to decide what’s next for the aging school. Greenlaw indicated Tuesday that it will likely give the property to the city of Presque Isle, which can either use or demolish the building.
