CARIBOU, Maine — Caribou’s new pre-kindergarten through grade 8 school is steadily moving from concept toward reality, and RSU 39 Superintendent Tim Doak said Wednesday that construction may even be completed a few months ahead of schedule.
“We [the new school building committee] talked about projecting an earlier opening date,” Doak said, “maybe not in August of 2020 but in February 2020, since we have to tear down the middle school to build the parking lot.”
The superintendent later said this is a result of initially believing the middle school could be demolished and transformed into a parking lot within a three-month period, and later learning the process is likely to take five months. As a result, Building Committee officials are talking about moving the demolition date up, which would result in the school’s opening date moving ahead as well.
“We haven’t formally gone ahead and made a decision about this,” Doak said on Aug. 21, adding that he does think it is likely to happen.
Caribou Middle School is one of several buildings the Maine Department of Education is paying Caribou to demolish, as part of the $50 million new school project. Built roughly 90 years ago, it is the oldest educational facility in the city.
The middle school would need to be closed earlier to compensate for the additional time, and opening the new school earlier would give students a place to learn while the state-funded demolition and parking lot construction occurs.
The new school will be built on the same parcel of land as Teague Park Elementary School, but between Teague Park and the existing middle school, meaning demolition of the elementary school could occur after the new project’s completion. The land will be transitioned into a sports area.
The original plan was to tear down Caribou Middle School in June of 2020, ending the year on Memorial Day, and then opening up after Labor Day.
“If we start tearing [the middle school] down in February, they’d have March and April [to demolish the building] and then use May, June and July to build the parking lots,” Doak said, “and we could use Teague Park for parking while they’re doing the Middle School work.”
Doak said an alternative opening date for the new school of around Christmas would be “too hectic of a time.”
The new school project also involves the demolition of the Caribou Learning Center on Bennett Drive and the former Sincock School building on South Main Street. Hilltop Elementary School has already closed and was sold to a private LLC with the intent of transforming the facility into a senior living center.
Since administrative staff currently use a portion of the Caribou Learning Center for office space, contractors are presently working on a new administrative building to house the superintendent, business manager and other RSU 39 officials. Doak said progress moved back by about “two weeks” due to workers finding “huge pieces of concrete” while working on the foundation.
Despite this, Doak says progress is going well, and that administrative officials should be moving in at some point between late November and early December of this year.
The administration building will be built at roughly the same time as officials plan to shut down and demolish the Learning Center, where the RSU 39 school board holds its regular meetings. Due to the new building’s small size, Doak said RSU 39 officials may have to rotate schools to hold their meetings, since he’s not sure if the conference room will accommodate the usual crowd of teachers, staff, board members and public citizens who attend.
