CHICOPEE — During the School Committee meeting on Dec. 4, the committee approved sending a request for $8.3 million to the city for seven capital improvement priorities recommended by Finance and Budget subcommittees.
The improvements include parking lot drainage improvements to Bowie Elementary School and Szetela Pre-School, a Belcher Elementary School Uni-vent upgrade and gym/cafeteria air conditioning projects at Barry Elementary, Bowe Elementary, Chicopee Academy, Fairview Elementary, Lambert-Lavoie Elementary, Stefanik Elementary and Szetela Pre-School.
Other priorities include a gym floor replacement at Litwin Elementary and playground replacements at Bowie Elementary and Streiber Elementary.
Superintendent Marcus Ware said that he has looked into whether or not the schools can get reimbursed for these projects but said, “Right now the state is closed to all those repairs, like when we did Dupont, so when the state opens up again, we can check then but at this time we cannot.”
Even though the School Committee approved sending these items to the City Council, Ware said they can still apply for reimbursement but does not know what the rules would be regarding if they can move forward with City Council getting reimbursed.
Mayor John Vieau explained that these requests will first go to the mayor’s office, like any request from any department, and then he will determine how to proceed from there.
During the Nov. 20 School Committee meeting, Maintenance Director Scott Chapdelaine met with the School Committee to give an update on the school facilities and maintenance.
Back in May, Chapdelaine said that in 2019, Chicopee schools had a $3.8 million bond and $600,000 set aside to air condition nine schools because only six schools had air conditioning in all the classrooms.
Since then, Barry, Fairview and Stefanik schools were all finished and Litwin and Bellamy were completed after that.
“Now that we did Litwin and Bellamy, in the next round we’re trying to get Bowie and Streiber because those are cafetoriums, so they’re used for gymnasium and cafeteria, so this would be the next phase of that to make all the schools equal,” he further explained.
At the Nov. 20 meeting, he discussed eight ESSER funded projects that totaled $8.6 million. These projects included AHU replacements at Bellamy and Litwin and Halo Vape detector installations in all the middle school and high school bathrooms.
The other projects included an AHU replacement project out for bid for design in Bowie and Streiber’s respective cafeterias.
Last year, Chapdelaine requested $5.7 million for seven capital priority projects and discussed the seven projects requested this year that total $8.3 million.
He said the Bowie parking lot project has been discussed for a while because the original parking lot has no drainage, and the water blows in the playground area.
The capital improvements were approved by the Facilities Subcommittee and Chapdelaine said he is hoping to see them approved by the School Committee and eventually sent to the mayor and City Council for the next round of capital improvements.
School Committee member Sandra Peret discussed the presentation Chapdelaine gave the facility subcommittee and stated, “It gave us a very detailed report on why these upgrades are needed and considering the age of our buildings, we need to invest in them for the continued safe buildings for our students. It’s something that we need to support.”
