Bridgehampton Boom Prompts Big Plans

Bridgehampton School officials have unveiled preliminary drawings for a 35,440-square-foot addition and renovation of the building, with an estimated cost of $25 million to $30 million, that they say would allow the district to meet the demands of increasing enrollment and current and future standards in education.

“The community urges us to make sure that we’re offering a viable academic program. I believe we’re really good at that, but space is really thwarting that forward movement,” Lois Favre, the Bridgehampton superintendent, said during the Aug. 24 school board meeting, when the drawings were released.

The district has planned a community forum for Sept. 14 at 6 p.m. to discuss the proposal in detail and solicit feedback from residents. A referendum vote could come in December.

Dr. Favre and school board members say the school’s science labs and library are lacking and the cafeteria is crammed into a former kindergarten room. They say the second-floor classrooms are half the size of regular classrooms, having been carved up into smaller spaces when more individual rooms were needed at some point, and will not fit the larger class sizes that will soon be moving up from elementary school into middle school and high school. Some of the modular classroom buildings outside the main school, which house music and prekindergarten programs and some administrative offices, are at least 40 years old and pose a security risk. Dr. Favre called the gymnasium “unsafe for athletes and fans alike” and said some schools refuse to play in sports games there.

Enrollment the beginning of this school year, on Tuesday, is 200 students, the highest number that Dr. Favre has seen in the last six years. Enrollment hit a high of 205 during the 2015-16 school year. It has grown about 40 percent since the 2012-13 school year, and is projected to keep growing.

“Trying to schedule and make sure the students have what they need gets increasingly difficult each year,” Dr. Favre said.

The drawings, created by the Port Jefferson architectural firm of John Grillo, show an addition at the back of the current school building. Drawings include a new gym, locker rooms, fitness center, cafeteria, science lab, music suite, technology lab, and classrooms dedicated to social studies and small group instruction. They show a renovated library and formal auditorium with a stage.

The idea of expansion at the Bridgehampton School is not new. According to Dr. Favre, it was discussed over the course of four years beginning in 2005. In 2008, the school board passed a resolution to ask its voters to “approve forward movement” on building an addition, but no such community vote took place, Dr. Favre said, and between 2007 and 2008, through the budget process, the district returned $5.6 million in reserves to taxpayers that had at one point been earmarked for potential expansion plans.

During the Aug. 24 meeting, the school board was in general agreement to pursue the process to renovate and expand.

Reached by phone yesterday, Ronnie White, the school board president, said he was happy with what he saw at the meeting.

“Since the existence of the building, we have yet to do any kind of major capital improvement or expansion,” he said. “From what I saw at the last board meeting, it would really solve the issues that we have. . . . It just appears as though it was definitely a need list instead of a wish list. I think they definitely catered to the things we are in dire need of.”

While the time spent viewing the preliminary plans and their subsequent discussion during the open portion of the meeting was brief, Mr. White said the board was “able to go back up there and take another look” during an executive session that followed. That, however, is not a permitted use of an executive session, which are limited to topics such as real estate negotiations, discussions of specific employees, and legal matters.

Mr. White urged residents to attend the forum on Sept. 14. “We’re hoping we can get as much of the community involved as possible,” he said. “It could be beneficial so long as everyone comes out to look, see, and understand. It’s important that we do that.”