Burlington High School will move to a new building on new land, the Queen City’s school board decided Tuesday night. It will also have a new principal.
At an eventful meeting, commissioners approved Superintendent Tom Flanagan’s recommendation that Lauren McBride be hired as the high school’s next principal. She had been serving in an interim capacity since the departure in January of interim Principal Noel Green.
That decision, however, was overshadowed by the news that the discovery of more PCB chemicals in the high school had made remediation untenable.
The presence of the cancer-causing carcinogens forced the school to shut down last fall and required students and staff to find a new home in a renovated Macy’s department store downtown.
At the board’s May meeting Tuesday night, Flanagan put a final nail in the coffin. The building could not be renovated, he said, so the district would have to build a new high school.
“It is no longer possible to meet our stated goals of the ‘ReEnvisioning project,’” Flanagan said, referring to its plan to rehabilitate the facility. “The remediation that will be needed to address the contamination pushes us over the threshold of what is possible in this building. And I believe that we need to start fresh with a new build.”
Remediation would cost the district between $7 million and $12 million, he said. Even then, it’s unlikely that the building would meet state safety thresholds due to the extensive nature of the contamination.
School board members said they agreed with Flanagan’s request to call off the renovations and find new land upon which to build a new high school. They unanimously approved his directive to end the “ReEnvisioning project” and cease all contracts related to the work.
The project was originally designed to renovate the aging high school with a $70 million bond approved by voters in 2018. But when PCBs were found while the project was underway, some of that money was redirected toward remediation.
Nathan Lavery, senior director of finance for the district, said only about $4 million had been borrowed for the renovations in fiscal year 2020. Another $20 million had been borrowed for fiscal year 2021 but was returned after the discovery of the PCBs and cannot be borrowed again, according to school district spokesperson Russ Elek.
He said the district was not sure whether it could use any of the $70 million bond for a new school since voters had signed off only on a renovation. Voters would be consulted again after financial assessments are completed, Elek said.
Flanagan said the district does not know what it would cost the city to find new land and build an entirely new high school. He said he wants the district to aggressively start seeking out new sites that could house a new building.
“We won’t get into the site assessment conversation tonight, but I feel really strongly that there are viable sites for us to build,” he said. “And the longer we wait to make this decision, the longer it takes to build.”
Commissioner Jean Waltz said she supported Flanagan’s plan and said his decision to make a final call to rebuild was brave — a sentiment others on the board also expressed.
“I’m concerned about contamination and can’t even imagine asking other employees to actually enter those spaces,” Waltz said. “So, I am wholeheartedly in support of scrapping and figuring out an alternative site.”
For the past several months, the district has continued testing the BHS building and surrounding grounds to determine if remediation was possible. Commissioner Polly Vanderputten called it frustrating that this work had prevented the district from moving toward a different solution sooner, but she said it had been necessary to make a final determination that a new building was the only way forward.
“I’ll admit that several months ago, I already felt really impatient. Like, why are we hemorrhaging money for something that seems futile?” she said. “But now I’m really glad that all the testing has been done and that we have a pretty cold case, pretty factual, that we need a new high school.”
School board Chair Clare Wool said conversations would continue at future meetings about how the rebuilding would move forward.
The board also unanimously approved Flanagan’s recommendation that McBride be awarded the principalship. She had been considered for the position alongside two other candidates: Steven Berbeco and Gregory Kirkland.
The search commenced after Green left the position abruptly in January, citing concerns around the longevity of his interim status.
Flanagan said there had been considerable support for McBride from the community and the hiring committee. Out of 45 responses to the committee’s community input survey, 86.7% of those who participated recommended that the district hire McBride.
“At the end, there was clear support for Miss McBride,” Flanagan said. “A unanimous recommendation came to me from the hiring committee for Lauren McBride to be principal of Burlington High School.”
McBride said the announcement was “really exciting.”
“I’m looking forward to continuing all the really great work that’s underway,” she said.
