New school proposed for South Queens

Plans to renovate the South Queens Junior High School have changed after the June 19 South Shore Regional School Board meeting and replaced with a proposal to build a new school.

“The original plans that were in place were developed quite some time ago,” said Superintendent of Schools, Nancy Pynch-Worthylake. “At that point in time it was deemed by the steering committee, a renovation project would be appropriate.”

Sewage backups and plumbing are the major infrastructure concerns at this time.

South Queens Junior High School Principal, Leo Campbell declared, “I have been in here basically ankle deep in backed up sewer water cleaning the pipers that were probably state of the art 50 years ago.”

The first phase of “retrofit” (renovations) should have started this past May, he added. It was “kind of like a new face lift, only problem with the face lift is they weren’t going to fix any of the necessary plumbing.”

At the June 19 meeting the SSRSB put in a request to change the renovation project to a new capital school construction project, said Pynch-Worthylake.

The request is on its way to the Department of Education.

It is roughly a $12-million project.

Instead of investing $5-million in renovating an old building, it would be more feasible to build a new school, she continued.

The school board’s plan is “the Dr. John C. Wickwire Academy will be reconfigured to a primary to grade five school, the middle school would be grades six to eight and the high school would be grades nine to twelve,” said Pynch-Worthylake.

Milton Centennial School is under review and the school board has until March 31, 2009 to make a decision to close the school or not.

A new school would accommodate any future changes such as grade reconfiguration.

Campbell thinks a new school would be fantastic.

Although the current building has a history, he feels its time for a new school.

“A building doesn’t define the education that goes on in there, it’s the students, it’s the community, it’s the teachers, it’s the whole nine yards,” said Campbell, “but working in a safe environment its definitely an asset.”

“Once this is approved then we would engage in a process to determine where the new school would be,” added Pynch-Worthylake.