GLOCESTER -- Opponents of the Ponaganset project are suggesting an alternative to building a new middle school and renovating the high school: put the sixth grade in Foster and Glocester elementary schools.
Two Glocester residents -- Jack Anderson and Ted Burlingame, and two Foster residents -- Town Council President Heidi Rogers and Town Solicitor Brad Gorham sent a letter to the Foster-Glocester Regional School Committee and both town councils on Monday.
The building committee had considered the option of cutting the sixth grade from the middle school and decided it would not offer students the best education.
But the project's foes say the elementary schools in both towns could accommodate the sixth grade because enrollment is declining.
"This would take pressure off the Ponaganset schools for several years," the letter says, by turning the middle school into a junior high school.
Voters have already authorized bonds for the construction project, but some residents are trying to stop it.
More than 4,000 voters in both towns approved a $46-million bond issue in November to renovate and expand the high school by connecting it to the existing middle school, and to build a new middle school on separate property. The entire project would cost about $65 million.
The recent Regional Financial Town Meetings, however, have become a forum for some voters to protest the project. Almost 300 residents voted to cut $254,000 from the school budget -- the exact amount needed for the first phase of the school building project. They also defeated the appropriation for debt service, which Gorham said means the bonds probably cannot be sold.
Some of the bond money approved could be spent on necessary capital improvements, the letter suggests.
"We don't have to spend it all. We can keep our taxes from skyrocketing."
The legislation that enabled the referendum, however, specifies that the money be spent on a new middle school.
"Maybe that's questionable," Gorham said, suggesting an amendment to the legislation could be an option.
Building committee member Raymond Fogarty said project planners had one meeting dedicated to the idea of moving the sixth grade.
"It was found to be educationally unsound," he said.
Middle school educators across the state are not going in that direction, he said.
"I trust those people who are the experts, not three people who are starting to question something," Fogarty said.
The middle school would still be a deficient building, and the move would only shift the crowding to the elementary schools.
"It would only forestall things and put things on the backs of the people in the future," he said.
"Patchwork" building is why the district is in its current situation, Fogarty said.
He questioned the motives of the four authors of the letter. Gorham helped draft the school bond legislation, but is opposing the project now that he works for the Town of Foster, Fogarty said.
"To politicize things at this point to the detriment of the students is shameful," he said.
School Committee Co-Chairman Gary King had not received the letter yesterday.
"They're trying to sway public opinion and they should have done it before the vote," he said. "It's my job to uphold the vote."
Gorham agreed it would have been better for the group to oppose the project earlier, but said, "You become aware of things after they start to happen. It's better late than never."
King said, "However logical this may sound to some, it's on the verge of irrational."
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