The Mineola school board is working to develop a five-year capital plan to complete more than 20 upgrade projects at its schools.
The $18.8 million worth of work could be funded from a variety of sources, including $576,879 state money from the SMART Schools Bond Act to create new pre-kindergarten wings at the Hampton Avenue and Meadow Drive Schools, district Superintendent Michael Nagler said last week.
That project will help the district expand its pre-kindergarten program and accommodate more parents who want their children to take full-day classes, Nagler said.
“I believe that the vast majority of parents will receive what they want when we have the space,” he said.
The district’s building condition survey identified 11 categories of improvements to be made across the Mineola district, Nagler said, including upgrades to handicap-accessible bathrooms, new interior doors, new playground surfaces and replacing floors containing asbestos.
Estimates for that work total $8.8 million, he said.
Nagler also identified a $10 million package of 11 other projects school board members and parents have said they would like to see, including the pre-kindergarten wing; a new bus loop at Mineola Middle School; and air conditioning in classrooms at Jackson Avenue School, the middle school and Mineola High School.
“It gets hot, and it’s hard to be productive in sweltering classrooms,” Nagler said.
To fund the projects, the district could put $4.2 million in a capital reserve fund over the next three years and hold a subsequent vote to spend it, Nagler said.
The current district budget contains more than $2.5 million for capital expenses that will roll over into the 2016-2017 budget, he said, but should be spent in the near future.
“You can’t think of it as never-ending, it will be there year after year,” Nagler said.
Other funding can come from the SMART Schools Bond Act and the district’s Energy Performance Contract, he said.
The SMART Schools money can only be used for certain purposes, and Nagler recommended spending it on the pre-kindergarten wing because the district is well outfitted for technology.
The district would add a classroom each at the Hampton Avenue and Meadow Drive schools to create a wing of three classrooms at each school with a separate pre-kindergarten play area, Nagler said.
That would give Mineola nine pre-school classrooms, including three it uses at the Harbor Child Care Center for full-day classes.
About half as many students are in full-day classes compared to half-day classes, Nagler said, and the district uses a lottery to determine who takes full-day classes.
Adding classrooms would let the district accommodate more parents who need full-day classes, he said, some of whom send their children elsewhere for pre-school if they don’t get a full-day spot in Mineola.
“I think it gets a little tricky now that you want to offer full-day and half-day, and then what buildings do you want to offer them in?” Nagler said. “But any way you look at it, we don’t have enough classrooms.”
