Disappointment again hits attempt to build Norwalk Early Childhood Center

NORWALK, Conn. – The plan to save Norwalk money in Special Education costs by building a Norwalk Early Childhood Center on Allen Road has again hit a snag and is in jeopardy, according to Board of Education Vice Chairman Artie Kassimis.

“It’s running into some challenges,” Kassimis said at Tuesday’s BoE meeting. “How do I put this? Right now the price is at $2 million, but every step we take it seems the price keeps going up. It could double and hit $4 million, and it could go even higher. If they will turn the gym into classrooms it will kick off a lot of other work. That’s where the other $2 million comes from. So I hate to say this, but it may be in jeopardy right now.”

Turning the old Roosevelt School at 11 Allen Road into the Norwalk Early Childhood Center was pushed by former Norwalk Superintendent of Schools Manny Rivera, who expressed great disappointment in January when it became apparent that the center would not open in the fall because the process could not be expedited at the state level.

Rivera said then, “According to the construction manager, the approved inclusion of therapeutic classrooms (made by Special Ed staff) to enhance the school’s ability to address special needs students was underestimated, and the cost of the project now exceeds the $1.65 million dollar budget allocation.”

The plan is to renovate the old school to create six classrooms for the first year, and renovate another two the following summer to make it a total of eight classrooms – which is what Norwalk has now, but spread out over four schools. This move was recommended in the 2012 Capitol Region Education Council (CREC) report, which sharply criticized Norwalk’s Special Education program.

“We can have services in one location as opposed to having individuals run all over the school system,” Norwalk Public Schools Chief Financial Officer Rich Rudl said to Finance Committee members in December. “… It’s a cost issue, it’s also an education issue. We have seen our costs for Special Ed skyrocket just in the last few years. One of the reasons they tend to go up is, at some point in that child’s education, something happens that goes wrong. Essentially, it’s too late and we have to out-place them.”

A side benefit to the consolidation is that it would open up classrooms at the schools that currently offer pre-K, Rudl said. Marvin Elementary has two such classrooms, and is “quite overcrowded,” he said.

Kassimis said Tuesday that another meeting needs to take place “to see where we are going to go from there.”

Mayor Harry Rilling offered more hope.

“The original plan was to do it in phases and to have six classrooms and then later convert the gym into two more,” Rilling said. “One of the options we have is to go to original phase 1 plan for $2 million, which is pretty much already allocated, and then determine what we do with the other two classrooms. It won’t increase the class size all that much, so that is a concern, but there’s still a lot of traffic and parking issues  that need to be addressed. So we’re going to have to look; another option we have is to perhaps try to locate someplace else.”

The Common Council in January authorized an $880,000 special appropriation for the project. Other funding comes from $771,000 of BoE surplus money from 2013-14. Rivera, in a Jan. 21 letter, said he was hoping to get $700,000 from the state by postponing the project’s completion to 2016.