Bales Mystery Solved

The mystery of what was behind the Bales Elementary School sign has been solved. The District took down the sign early this week, and this is what they found:


The sign says:

* MILFORD HIGH SCHOOL *
** 1894 **

The newly-visible old granite sign is very nice, but I don't think that it will work for us going forward. The building is currently used as a combination middle/high alternative school, and there is a good chance that it will be a multipurpose building at some point in the future.

The school has some nice "bones" to it, and I think that it deserves to have a long future.

We are going to put on a new roof and replace the soffits as a side project of the current High School renovation project that was approved last year. The building needs a lot more to get it usable for a potential long term function. There will be a study committee starting up this fall that will investigate the potential uses for the building, and to guide us in figuring out what should be done with the building.

High School Renovation Project

We held another meeting last night of the High School Renovation Committee. The purpose of the meeting was to review the bids that came in for "Phase 1" of the track portion of the project. Phase 1 is primarily for the site work and field aspects of the project.

In summary, the budget for the track and field portion of the overall project is $945k, not including any contingency funds or other soft costs. Our current best estimate for this portion of the project (including items that were bid and place holders for items that were not bid) is $1,274k, or $328k higher than budgeted.

This was based on awarding the site work contract to Leighton White, who bid roughly $619k for the site work, while the next lowest bid of the five received was roughly $697k for the same work.

It was disappointing to get such bad news right at the start of the project, but I don't think that it is a killer to the overall project. There are some things that we can do to ease the pain.

While we don't really have a good explanation as to why the bids were so much higher than our planning budget that was used for the budget, our best guess is that the drainage portion of the project ended up being much more complicated than originally envisioned. The final design included a new separate retention area for the water overflow whereas the original thought was that we could just use the retention pond just below the Middle School. The elevations were such that the existing area was too high to make it work, so a new retention area closer to West street was needed.

We made a couple of changes to the project during the meeting to help solve this cost problem. We decided to eliminate the Clerk of the Works position to save $54k. (We did not actually vote to do this at the meeting, but it is highly likely that we will do so at a future meeting.) The position is not really required since we decided to go with a Construction Manager arrangement instead of strictly using a general contractor. The Construction Manager and our own on-site personnel will keep tabs on the project instead. Having a Clerk of the Works might be marginally better than not having one, but it doesn't seem like it is worth the $54k that it would cost.

We spent a lot of time talking about track surfaces. The original plan was for a urethane based surface, and that is what was included in the estimate. We decided to change to a red-colored latex surface instead of going with the urethane surface. The information that we had was that the latex surface would probably need more frequent maintenance actions than the urethane, but the maintenance would be less expensive each time. The urethane might last longer than the latex, but no one could give us any hard numbers as to how long either surface would last. Both surfaces come with a five-year warranty, so from that perspective, they are about equal. Changing to red-colored latex saves $52k in installation cost as compared to the urethane. Latex seems to be the surface of choice for high schools in this area, with Bedford and Pinkerton both planning on installing latex for their recent projects.

We talked about using a blue surface instead of red just to get it to match our school colors, but supposedly the blue color fades fairly quickly while the red seems to be relatively color-fast. We were given a list of 11 schools that had a latex track, and 9 were red and 2 were blue. We decided that color-fastness was more important than matching the school colors.

Eliminating the Clerk of the Works, and changing the track to latex saved a total of $106k, bringing our cost problem down to $223k. The contingency on the project is budgeted at 15% of the construction costs. The 15% contingency associated with the $945k is $141k. If we apply all of that contingency to this portion of the project, then that decreases the cost problem down to $82k. One hates to tap into contingency so early in the process, but that is what it is for so we might as well go for it now since it is needed.

There are still a number of items that are in the cost build-up with a place-holder number that is an estimate and not an actual bid. One of the bigger items is the bleachers, with a place-holder number of $150k for a 680 seat bleacher on the home side and a 320 seat bleacher on the visitor side. This compares to the roughly 400 home/200 visitor set-up we have today. This $150k figure may be more or less once the bids come in. If we really needed the savings, then would could downsize the bleachers a bit to save cost. For example, it was estimated that changing to a 560 home/200 visitor set-up would save about $35k.

The committee voted to award the bid to Leighton White and to therefore move ahead with the project using the current designs. We will have to deal with the remaining $82k cost problem in some manner on the project, but we left that task to a later date once we get better figures for the other items.

The School Board will review this on Monday, and make a final decision on whether to award the contract to Leighton White. Assuming they do, then it is likely that Leighton will start work soon after Labor Day, We are going to have one final home football game at home on August 31st, so he can't start before then. There may be other issues that delay him a bit, but the work should begin soon.

Milford one of 10 Coolest Small Towns

Budget Travel Magazine named Milford one of the 10 Coolest Small Towns in America! Go Milford!

Too bad it was Milford, PA.

Milford, PA is a small resort town that seems nice from the write up in their story, but I'll take Milford, NH any day.

I ran across the story because I saw an article that mentioned that Peterborough was also named one of the ten coolest small towns in America. The Budget Travel article talks about how the town is cool because it is kind of artsy. Although I hardly ever go there, I am impressed with Peterborough, and I agree that it is a cool little town.

My grandmother grew up in Peterborough, and I remember some of the stories she told me 40 years ago about her life in Peterborough during the first decades of the 20th century. She was there when cars were rare, roads weren't paved, and you were well off if you were able to go to school up to the eighth grade. People routinely worked long hours for low pay, and struggled to make ends meet. Life is so much easier today, in so many ways, and we don't appreciate how well off we really are now.

Milford School Board 8/20/07

Superintendent's Report

Superintendent Suprenant reviewed some of the activities that occurred during the summer including:

* 339 students attending some sort of summer school program,
* Lots of training was held for various staff members,
* The schools were all cleaned and prepped for the new year,
* Some asbestos at the high school was abated in preparation for the upcoming renovations.

He announced that the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) scores would be released by the State Dept of Education on Tuesday August 28th.

He issued some press releases to highlight various items. One item in particular that he is trying to promote are the new Evening Community Education programs that will be offered this fall. In summary, there are several courses that will be offered on a tuition basis this fall in the evening at the High School. The courses are:

* Conversational Spanish
* We the People...the Citizen and the Constitution
* Digital Scrap Booking with Photoshop
* Microsoft Word 2003
* Microsoft Excel

More information on these offerings can be found on the school web site.There is a link on that page to a description of the courses, and another link to the registration forms. Most of the courses start on Tuesday October 2nd.

Superintendent Suprenant invited the School Board members to attend the opening session for the staff on Tuesday the 28th. I was able to attend the session last year, and I thought that it was very helpful to hear the messages that were given to everyone. The session is used to try to get everyone on the same page for the year, working towards common goals.

PEG Access

David Kirsch is the new PEG Access Director. PEG is Public, Educational, and Government Cable TV Access. Milford has improved the channel 21 access over the past couple of years, and we are making more progress all the time. Dave has some good ideas on how to improve things, and he will be working to add to the program over time.

Some of the things that we discussed were:

* He is hoping to add sports coverage, but there are a bunch of details that need to be worked out. There is just one true home football game this year, and he is hoping to tape the game and broadcast it on channel 21. One issue is that while it is usually fairly easy to get someone to operate the camera, it is usually very difficult to get a commentator/announcer for the game. Dave is hoping to get someone from the Radio club to act as a commentator during the game.

* Dave talked about some of his previous experiences with other schools, such as in Concord. He said that one of the keys to gaining content is to provide a camera/computer/editing software setup to each school to enable them to create presentations on a regular basis.

* He thought that it might be good to create an overview film for each of the ATC programs. These videos could be shown on CATV, and they could also be shown to prospective students from other districts.

* We discussed how we can try to improve the audio quality of the School Board tapings. There are a few choices: do nothing, get a new microphone/mixer setup (about $5K), move to the Selectmen's Meeting Room where they have set up a decent system, or fix up a place in the school that has an improved setup. I am in favor of fixing up Room 4 in the High School as the designated meeting room, instead of just using the Selectman's Room. The main advantage is that Room 4 seats about 100 people, and the Selectmen's Room only seats about 20. Having seating for 20 people is fine for most meetings, but there are usually several meetings a year where 20 is just not enough.

* Dave mentioned that there are satellite feeds of educational programs that are popular in other Districts. He mentioned Annenberg and NASA as being two that were very good. He is going to look to see if we can add them to Milford.

* The Selectmen's meetings are going to be broadcast live in a month or two. We may be able to do the School Board meetings live also, but that would be for a later date and would require some sort of infrastructure to make it happen.

Policy Review

The Staff Protection policy was postponed pending further review of the implications of paying additional compensation on top of Workers' Compensation payments.

The Daily Physical Activity policy was approved. This policy was required by the state standards that were updated last fall. The basic premise of the policy is that the District will encourage all members of the District community to engage in some sort of daily exercise.

I brought up an issue that had come to light during our discussions last meeting on the Daily Physical Activity Policy. The State mandates minimum expectations for this policy, and we used the State guidelines for our policy. The New Hampshire School Boards Association has a sample policy that is more emphatic on a couple of points. For example, in one spot they use the phrase "Commit adequate resources..." and our policy uses the phrase "Support adequate resources..." for the same section. The policy review committee had mentioned this discrepancy at the last meeting when they were discussing the proposed policy.

I thought that it was a good practice for the policy review committee to bring to light any discrepancies like that, and I thank them for doing so on this policy. I asked that in the future, they continue to bring up any discrepancies that are identified between the proposed policy and the NHSBA sample policy. Also, I asked them to identify any NHSBA sample policies that were reviewed, but the committee decided to not implement. My concern on this is that there are some sample policies that have a political philosophy associated with them that might have varying support by the board as a whole. I would prefer that anything that is controversial be dealt with at the board level, and not be decided by a sub-committee without having an open discussion.

The policy committee is systematically going through our existing policies and updating them as required. I would encourage them to change their process to instead of starting with our policy book, that they use the sample policies from the NHSBA as the starting point to try to find the areas where we are deficient.

The policy review committee has been doing a good job, and they have updated quite a few policies. Sometimes just changing the wording in a very slight manner can have a big effect on on the outcome, so they have had to be very careful as they go through the policies.

Bales School

We decided to remove the "Bales Elementary School" sign from the front of the building. This will eliminate the word Elementary from a sign on a school that is no longer an elementary school. It will also allow us to see what is under the sign, since we don't know for sure what the exact wording is that is there. The best guess is that there is a sign under there that says "Centennial School", but there is a chance that it says "Centennial High School".

We did not rename the building at this time, but we may do that at a future meeting.

High School Renovations

Phase one of the bid items have come back in, and they will be presented to the building committee on Thursday 8/23. According to Mike Trojano, the bids on several of the items came in much higher than originally estimated. We are going to have to deal with this in some manner.

The School Board will have a quick meeting on Monday August 27th to review the Building Committee's recommendation about the bids. The objective is to award the grounds work as soon as possible so construction on the field can be started quickly. We'll have to see where the bids are before we do this, since we need to make sure that the overall renovation project stays on track.

World Language Curriculum

The new curriculum was approved.

Superintendent/District Goals

These were approved. Bob Willette asked (and we approved) that a goal to investigate lengthening the school day be added to the list.

A Day in the Life of a Milford Firefighter

I came across a very nice slideshow set to music that shows a day in the life of a Milford Firefighter. It is 3:42 in length, and worth watching. There are lots of interesting pictures showing various events that the Milford Fire Department has encountered, from floods to fires.

The credits at the end of the video give photo credits to Chief (ret.) Richard Tortorelli, Ed Stella, and the Milford Fire Department. It then suggests that if you have any interest in joining the Department, then you should contact Chief Fraitzl at mfd@milford.nh.gov.

The video is on youtube, and also on the town fire department website.

Our safety personnel in town do a great job, and they don't get the recognition that they deserve. Kudos to all of them, and thanks for serving.

Bales Elementary School

The Bales Elementary School has a long history. This is the brief summary of it as posted on the MilfordNH web site:

In 1894 the town of Milford celebrated its centennial and the new Centennial High School was opened. The cost of the whole project was $47,000 of which $10,000 was for the land. The new school contained the latest in equipment and building features. Because of its excellence, students from surrounding communities were attracted to it and the tuition was welcomed by the town. Eleven graduates were in the first graduating class in 1896 and the last class to graduate was in 1961 with eighty graduates. In 1961 high school students were housed in the new AREA high school on West Street and the old high school was given over entirely to Junior High students. The building was remodeled In 1969 and became the elementary school. It was renamed the Bales Elementary School In honor of Harold C. Bales who served as superintendent from 1919 to 1939.

The building is no longer used as an elementary school, and is instead used mainly to house the Sage School program and the Special Education staff. This is a brief summary of the Sage School, as shown on the Sage School web site:

The Milford Alternative School, known as the Sage School, provides educational and therapeutic programming for students in grades six through twelve identified as "high risk" or with a serious emotional disability.

The mission of the Milford Alternative School is to provide an alternative, safe, and supportive environment in which students can achieve their academic potential and develop the skills and competencies necessary for employment, further education, and daily life.

I'd like to rename the building, with the primary motivation to get rid of the word "Elementary" since it is no longer appropriate. I think that calling it the "Bales Building" would be fine, but other names would be OK also. There is a good chance that the building will end up being a mixed use building, with a combination of school uses and town uses. Calling it a building instead of a school matches up better for a mixed use structure.

The District will be setting up a Bales Use Study Committee this fall, with the objective being the development of long term plans for the building. Everything will be on the table for review by the committee, from selling the building (giving it away), to doing nothing, to full renovations for various uses. Contact the SAU office if you have any interest in serving on the committee.

As part of the bond that passed last year, we will be putting a new roof on the building and fixing the soffits. We will hold off on doing other major work until there is a long-term plan in place for the building that seems to make sense. The next larger bond probably won't be proposed until sometime after the existing Middle School bond expires in the 2012 time frame, so there is plenty of time to figure out what we want to do with the building.

JerriAnne Boggis Wins Award

The Milford Observer had a front page article this week that announced that JerriAnne Boggis was named the 2007 winner of the Women's Recognition Award by the New Hampshire Commission on the Status of Women.

Ms. Boggis won the award for her tenacious efforts to raise awareness of Milford resident Harriet Wilson (1825-1900). Wilson was the first black woman to publish a novel in the United States. Her semi-autobiographical novel "Our Nig; or Sketches From the Life of A Free Black" was published in 1859.

Ms. Boggis was the driving force behind the Harriet Wilson Project which was initially set up to simply promote the study of Harriet Wilson, but morphed into much more. The group decided to commission an ambitious statue of Harriet Wilson for display in Milford. They did extensive fund-raising and promotion for the project, and they held a very moving dedication ceremony on November 6, 2006.

This award couldn't go to nicer person. I don't know her myself, but I did attend a talk that she gave to the Milford Historical Society, and I attended the dedication ceremony. I was very impressed by her at both events, and it is obvious that she is committed to making a positive difference in New Hampshire.

She is scheduled to receive the award from the Governor and the Executive Council on September 19th.

Thank you JerriAnne for being such a dedicated and noble soul. You have helped to improve the heritage of Milford. It is people like you that make this such a wonderful community.