Residents in Marlborough are once again heading to the Marlborough School April 8 to vote.
Eight times they’ve turned down a proposal for a new, $11.2 million dollar school.
A powerful minority has kept the project from going forward so far.
It’s turned into a classic fight in cash-strapped New Hampshire schools.
Keene Sentinel's Donna Moxley reports
Marlborough School is a place where students learn to read, write, and take gym class….pretty average school stuff.
But this isn't an average school.
The roof is considered too weak to hold more than 6 inches of fluffy snow, and less of the heavy stuff.
The sewer system back-vents into the art room.
Two classrooms have been closed by order of the state fire marshal for lack of egress.
There’s plastic sheeting taped around crumbling, exposed pipes.
Marlborough School Principal Karen Parsells:
Karen Parsells:
1:38 - “I think it’s really important for the whole town to know how much we have to maintain this building and it’s just ongoing and it’s very expensive.”
The kids complain most about the condition of the bathrooms and the color of the drinking water,
But school officials are looking deeper.
A recent tour of the school with custodian Bob Nolan revealed some of the cause for worry.
(sound through the electrical room into the boiler room)
7:57 NOLAN This is the electrical panels, some of them are in service, some of them aren’t in service and some of them are sort of married to another system, so this is all scheduled to get ripped out and rewired.”
ME. “And do you know what they all do?”
Nolan: “I don’t. I’m not sure the electricians have figured it out.”
(moving into the boiler room)
The boiler room is oppressively hot, and the huge old boiler takes up most of it.
Nolan says the system frequently breaks down.
Last year, when school officials left the door open to allow some of the heat into the rest of the building, something unexpected happened.
9:07 NOLAN: It subsequently snuffed out the furnace. The gun went out because it wasn’t getting the right back draft pressure on it … so we have to be careful with that. If we have a strong wind it’s apt to misfire as well.”
(fade the boiler)
In a hallway near the entrance of the school, there's a loose metal cover over a jagged hole in the tile.
Nolan said it's part of the building's sewer system.
NOLAN 2 - Sometimes we get a whiff of odor here like a methane smell - but the art room is probably more prevalent ... it's all because the system's been added onto, proper venting wasn't in place, or it was there and some's been ripped out for whatever reason so the system just isn't right here anymore.
ME: So is this here acting like a sewer vent, then?
NOLAN 3 - "It is. You get sewer gases that escape up there periodically."
The State Fire Marshall has given the school conditional approval to operate as long as it makes $1.2 million in repairs scheduled for this summer.
But that doesn’t change what voters have to decide when they meet on April 8th.
They’re deciding, for the 9th time, on an 11 million dollar new school to satisfy what the state department of education requires.
A majority of the voters has always supported the new facility.
But in Marlborough, big bond issues like this need a two-thirds majority to be approved.
Last month, it missed by just one vote.
Ken Kerber is one of the town’s more vocal opponents of a new school. He supports a full renovation of the school that would cost 2.7 million instead.
Kerber: 12:20
“Our point is when you look at a fully renovated school, as this would be with all new systems in it and all new interiors, etc., there really wouldn’t be any academic difference, or difference in academic achievement, between a renovated school and a new school.”
Kerber and his group Marlborough Money Matters have accused school officials of witholding information and choosing a bad site for the new school.
But the renovation project has gotten even fewer votes than the new school.
Former School Board Chair James Carley said that shows most Marlborough residents don’t want to put even more money into a “bad building.”
Carley: “It becomes a game of brinksmanship almost, and it’s very, it’s not the right way to go about it. We need an answer this year. Either build a new school or we say that’s it, this building isn’t worth it, let’s shut it down and tuition our kids out.”
Carley and his supporters have been considering other options, like sending all of their students to Keene, where Marlborough kids attend high school.
But that approach has its own problems.
Paying tuition for everyone would likely cost more than current operations or even a new school.
And the Marlborough middle schoolers would be stepping from one troubled building into another.
Parts of Keene Middle School have been called "a matchbox" by the local fire inspector.
James Carley.
CARLEY: “If they can’t take our middle school kids, where do our middle school kids go? To Dublin? To Jaffrey/Rindge, to the Conval system? … Do you want to have your kids go to Keene K-5, then leave all their friends and go to some other middle school for three years and then come back and go to Keene?”
Back at the Marlborough School, working mom Stacy Willbarger says it’s been a frustrating few years.
WILLBARGER - "We had moved here in hopes of finding something permanent for us - my husband was retired military, we wanted a permanent location for our child to grow up. He was 8 at the time.”
Now, Willbarger said if the family could get for their house what they paid for it, they would be gone.
WILLBARGER 2 - " Unfortunately at this point we're stuck. If we could sell the house today, we'd be moving today."
The state senate, led by local senator Molly Kelly, has approved a bill that would allow towns like Marlborough to pass bond issues with just a 60-percent majority.
If the House and governor also approve it, it would go into effect immediately.
All eyes are watching to see if that happens before April 8.
For NHPR News, I’m Donna Moxley
