To the editor:

When the Middle School closed, the Westport School Committee faced the cold, hard truth that the relocation of our entire student body from four to three buildings is untenable over the long term. Leased trailers and a return to overcrowded conditions at the high school facility are the short-term fixes that allow us to keep a roof over everyone’s head for the time being. We suspect the town may face a crisis-based decision in the near future, possibly with no reimbursement from MSBA, if we do not address our school facility needs now.

Visit our second graders today and you enter the temporary leased trailers with a limited life expectancy that annually deplete our budget. Walk through the high school and you will find students in spaces not designed for classroom use and in makeshift basement classrooms hastily carved out of the old WHS locker rooms with portable walls to accommodate the crush of students back in the 1970s.

Look at our millions of dollars of capital needs and you cannot help but wonder at what point we are throwing good money after bad. Apply that same question to the prospect of spending thousands and millions of taxpayer dollars to either maintain or demolish the abandoned Middle School and you get the same result.

The town’s School Building Committee proposes a fiscally prudent long-term solution to build two schools for roughly 60 million local taxpayer dollars. The MSBA reimbursement puts us in a buy one-get one free situation, so to speak, reimbursing nearly half of the total cost for the grade 5-12 school. Additional reimbursements for nearly $1 million spent so far on project design as well as the demolition of the vacant school sweeten the pot to relieve taxpayers of two additional burdens.

Rated by MSBA the most cost-efficient design in their list of pending projects, the proposed school serves both the taxpayers and the students well. That is the plan we support because the need is here, the need is now, and the need is not going away. That is the cold, hard truth. We can kick the can down the road or we can answer the call.

Westport has a history of doing the right thing for our hometown students. Post World War II taxpayers answered the call when they built a new school for grades 7-12 that has served three generations of Westport students so well. They supported building the Macomber School only a few years later. As the population grew, taxpayers answered the call to build a middle school. Finally, they phased out the remaining wooden frame schools with the “new” Westport Elementary School. That was a generation ago. It is time to answer the call again.

We support the new school project because without it we simply cannot sustain our students in an appropriate educational environment for the long term. We have hopes, dreams, and plans for improving the quality of our programs and the competitiveness of our offerings within the walls of the new school. However, hopes and dreams do not change the fact that temporary trailers and a Sputnik-era facility do not make educational or financial sense.

The School Committee voted not to kick the can down the road because it is the right thing to do. We have faith that on Tuesday, February 27, 2018, this community will answer the call.

Margot Desjardins

Chairwoman, Westport School Committee