Wear and Tear Repairs Approved at Sag Harbor Schools; District Will Address Need To Upgrade High School Gym

Addressing necessary upgrades to the facilities at both the Sag Harbor Elementary School and Pierson Middle-High School was the main topic of discussion at the latest Sag Harbor Board of Education meeting on Monday night.

The meeting opened with a public hearing on the use of repair reserve funds for repairs to some classroom walls and ceilings, hallways and stairwells at the elementary school, and repairs to the middle school and high school gym floors, which the board unanimously approved.

The necessary fixes are the result of “normal wear and tear and water damage” according to School Business Administrator Jennifer Buscemi, who gave a short presentation at the meeting.

The damage occurred before the recent masonry repair upgrades, and will require scraping, spackling, plaster repairs, priming, painting and water sealing where necessary, to areas including walls, base moldings, ceilings, doors, door frames, railings, kickers and risers.

Those repairs would total $150,000, and include all materials, labor, and scaffolding. The work will be completed this summer.

The district will also appropriate an additional $16,000 from the fund for the gym floor repairs, which are also necessary due to normal wear and tear. The repairs will include screening and applying two coats of sports finish to each gym floor, which will smooth out uneven, slippery areas on the floor. That work will also be completed this summer.

The repair reserve fund, which was created in 2015 after voter approval, was fully funded at $2.5 million at that time, and those funds cannot be replenished without another district referendum. The projected balance in the fund after the $166,000 expenditure for the repairs that were approved at the meeting is $806,973.

Education and Facilities Planning Committee Presents Report

The gym floors will get a touch-up this summer, but those repairs represent only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to what needs to be done as far as addressing indoor physical education facilities in the district, according to members of the Education and Facilities Planning Committee.

That committee also gave a presentation at the board meeting and specifically requested permission to have Buscemi work on putting out a request for proposals to see what can be done to upgrade the high school gym. The committee members pointed out that the gym currently does not have an HVAC system, that the locker rooms are in poor condition, that the gym floor has “dead spots” that create safety and playability concerns, and that the low gym ceiling height does not support all sports.

They drove their points home by pointing out that three out of four Pierson students play a sport, and that the gym is not only used for school sports but is a community resource as well for other sports and recreational activities. The district also uses the gym for testing and voting.

The committee said the district could either continue operating under current circumstances, pursue incremental fixes of the existing gym space, fully renovate the gym within its existing footprint, or build an entirely new gym on the back field of the high school. The committee recommended against pursuing incremental fixes and also did not recommend renovating the existing gym, saying it would be “impractical,” and would cost significantly more in the long run to pursue a renovation within the existing footprint.

The board agreed to let Buscemi put out a request for proposals to get a sense for what options would exist for a new gym, including what might fit inside the current footprint.