School renovations complete; students return after three years

By Sarah Hall

Editor

It’s the celebration that almost wasn’t.

The Chestnut Hill complex wasn’t supposed to be renovated; it was supposed to be shut down, its students dispersed to other schools across the Liverpool Central School District — at least according to the plan presented to the board of education in 2010.

But the board opted to keep the schools open, to pursue the renovation, and to give the Chestnuts — which have the highest rates of economically disadvantaged students in the district, according to New York State Education Department data — the chance to shine. And shine they do: the doors to the newly rebuilt elementary school reopened with a ribbon cutting celebration Wednesday, Sept. 6, where kids, families and the community got their first look at the school in three years. (The middle-schoolers returned to their building last year.)

“We love it,” said CHE Principal Todd Bourcy. “It’s home. It’s very exciting.”

While CHE had a roof replacement in 1998 and other minor fixes, this is the first significant renovation the building has seen in its nearly 60-year history. The total cost of the project, which included work at Liverpool High School and CHM, was $39.7 million; of that, $12.1 million was spent at CHE on:

• Improving the classrooms, kitchen, library and gymnasium
• Replacing the roofing, flooring, ceilings and lockers
• Installing ADA accessible toilets and hardware
• Improving the HVAC system
• Upgrading the building’s plumbing and electrical

The building’s age and poor condition prompted the district’s Long Range Facilities Committee to propose closing the complex as part of its long-range plan in 2010.

“I was — terrified is too strong of a word, but I was really concerned about it,” Bourcy said. “I’ve been here since ’98 as a teacher and the last several as an administrator. You form really strong relationships with the community, with the families. To lose a southern hub like this, it would have been devastating.”

Bourcy said the Chestnuts often felt neglected as other buildings got multimillion-dollar renovations.

“My first year teaching, we had buckets in the hallways, in the classrooms, because we were leaking,” he recalled. “So not to say we were forgotten, but because it was always in the back of people’s minds, ‘It may close, it may close.’ We were passed by for renovations even though we were next in line. And I think some of the students and the families, and even some of the staff had a chip on their shoulder about it. But it also turned into a bit of a rallying cry.”

Eventually, the school board made the decision to keep the Chestnuts open to maintain the district’s neighborhood schools. LCSD Superintendent Dr. Mark Potter, who spoke at the unveiling of the new building last week, praised the board’s “open-mindedness and really visionary thinking” and thanked the community for supporting the project.

“Because of the cost, these buildings were not aided nearly as high [by the state],” Potter said. “I want to thank the community for supporting a lower-aided vote but at the same time commend the board for a decision and having some vision that we want to keep all of the neighborhood schools, all of the community schools in place without closing them and forcing the kids to go to a different school.”

That said, during the course of the renovation, the roughly 380 students at Chestnut did have to be bussed out to a different school — they spent three years at the former Wetzel Road Elementary while they waited for their building to be finished.

“We liked living at Wetzel Road for three years,” Bourcy said. “It’s centrally located. We formed a lot of great relationships with high school, with the students and the staff.”

But it’s so much better to be home, he added.

“[Wetzel is] at least 20 to 30 minutes, depending on busing and construction,” he said. “So yeah, it was a burden for them and our after-school activities, and our PTO was strategic in how they planned our activities. But the parents were so very supportive still, even living out there, to support all the activities we did.”

Now those sacrifices are paying off.

“I can’t wait to see the effects that it has when these kids finally have the best of the best, and they have a place that they call home that is crisp and clean and new and has the best technology, and it has the newest furniture. It has the brightest space,” Bourcy said. “Everything they’ve never experienced that before, and now they get it. Now they have the best of the best. And I’m looking to see the effects of, ‘Wow, we can be proud of our place. I’m not sitting at a broken desk with a broken chair and an Epson projector that doesn’t work. And then lights that keep going out. Or this roof keeps leaking here. Or it’s so hot I can’t concentrate.’ I’m really looking forward to seeing how those changes take place…. Yeah, it’s amazing.”