Alternative Organizational Structure (AOS) 98 Superintendent Robert Kahler told Community School District trustees Dec. 1, the next phase for the Building Exploratory Committee (BEC) is creating a group to review the campus’s conditions. The group will have school board members, principals, teachers, students and people from the wider community and will ideally meet three times in January in sessions of about two and a half hours. The group will be considering the CSD’s current visioning work including the ideal setting for that vision to be realized, Kahler said.

“They're going to start by looking at how does the design of the building enhance that … and all that information will be going out to community members in various settings. It's not a finalized deal, but it's beginning to take some of this theoretical stuff and start to say what might that look like, what are people’s dreams, what are their concerns, what are their questions.”

With roughly 20 people interested in joining the group, dates and times for the meetings have not been decided yet. Sessions will be virtual, but will not be broadcast due to the difficulty of setting up multiple virtual breakout rooms and the resulting avenues of new ideas and information, Kahler said. “But the end result is going to be shared multiple times for continued feedback.”

Kahler said he has chosen a third party contractor to assess the schools’ conditions in the meantime, but there are some last minute changes to the contract because the situation is unique: They will assess the buildings and lay out cost estimates, but not be involved with the project any further.

“Cost estimators don't normally do this. They're usually part of a team that does it, but they don't typically do this … We should have a comparable plan (for) an apples to apples comparison and if we need to get both firms together to talk about any differences, so much the better.”

The contractors will touch base with AOS 98 Director of Facilities Dave Benner to plan a site visit for January, Kahler said. They will get access to all the work done to date and the final report will likely be finished in spring.

Benner said the BEC’s grounds subcommittee will meet at 5:15 p.m. Dec. 13 in the Boothbay Region High School library. The workshop’s purpose is to go through updated surveys and site plans, prior plans for the athletic fields and general structural improvements, Benner said. The workshop will be open to the public, but will not be held over Zoom.

“We're going to talk about where things can go possibly or what we do if we do nothing … It's the beginning of something we really as a board of trustees do.”