Bridgehampton voters approve $25M school building expansion
Students walk back to the main school building from a cluster of portable buildings at the Bridgehampton School in Bridgehampton on Sept. 26, 2016. The school district is considering its first school expansion since the school was built in 1930. Credit: Gordon M. Grant
Voters approved 167-135 an estimated $25 million expansion of the Bridgehampton school district’s school building at a special election Tuesday night.
It would be the first expansion of the two-story brick building since it was constructed in 1930. The project will address a space crunch that dates back 50 years.
Superintendent Lois Favre said the severe lack of space through the years has resulted in the district using four portable trailers for some offices and to conduct classes.
The library also is used for some classes, classrooms have been physically split in half to provide more rooms, elementary art and music lessons are being conducted in the school’s café, and student locker rooms and two technology rooms are being housed in the basement.
Favre said most classrooms at the school, once attended by the Boston Red Sox’s Carl Yastrzemski, are “multiuse” and are shared by more than one teacher.
About 200 students attend the school, which has kindergarten through 12th grade, and enrollment is up 35 percent in the past three years, Favre said.
Robert Hauser, assistant superintendent for finance and facilities, added that other factors contributing to the need for more space include the June closing of the Wainscott-based Child Development Center of the Hamptons and interest from students at private schools in such new district offerings as digital photography, 3-D printing, botany and lunches prepared on the premises by cooks instead of being provided through a vendor.
Hauser said the expansion project could start in July 2018 and construction was expected to take about 13 months to complete.
Favre said an expansion has been discussed by the board of education for more than a decade, but Hauser said action had to be taken in the spring, when the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools recommended a facilities upgrade.
