Montauk voters give go-ahead to school district's $34.87M bond proposal

Montauk voters Tuesday approved a nearly $35 million bond proposal that will pay for the renovation and expansion of the district’s K-8 school building and the construction of a home for future superintendents.

The plan to build a two-story annex housing a new gymnasium and space for science classes, as well as reconfigure the existing building’s layout won by a tally of  508-262, Principal and Superintendent Joshua Odom told Newsday after the votes were counted. Voters approved another ballot measure to spend $2.9 million of the district's capital savings on HVAC, electrical and other upgrades by a count of 596-160.

Voters narrowly rejected a similar bond measure on May 20, after which the district altered the renovation plans and reduced the price by around 10% to $34.87 million, Odom said. The cost to the average taxpayer with a home worth just over $1.5 million for the 20-year bond will be approximately $360 a year.

Odom described the construction project, scheduled to begin in the summer of 2027, as the largest the district has seen in 25 years. The nearly century-old school building lacks the space to run athletics and performing arts programming simultaneously, and some infrastructure installed decades ago have stretched beyond their expiration dates, he added.

The school’s current gym, adjacent to a stage, is used not only for physical education classes and sports teams but for assemblies and the school’s band and drama programs, Odom said. The school’s classes and extracurriculars all rely on the space and compete for limited time slots.

The new gym will “allow us to host all of our sports and our athletics and our drama programs at the same time,” Odom said. Currently, he added, “when we have a school play, for rehearsal, we have to cancel [sports] practice or cancel games.”

The new athletic space will also be tall enough to host the school’s volleyball team, which has long had to practice at the Montauk Playhouse community center, Odom said.

The old gymnasium will be transformed into a music and arts space, according to the superintendent. There will also be some square footage left over for a cafeteria.

“Right now our students eat lunch in their classrooms,” Odom said.

Reconfiguring various classrooms and offices will result in the net addition of one new classroom, Odom said. A trio of classroom trailers erected in the early 1970s that currently house middle school classes will be demolished.

“They were supposed to have a 20- to 30-year life span, then be replaced,” Odom said. “They’re rapidly deteriorating. … I deal with issues of water pooling, it kind of seeps up during rains, it comes down between the walls. We deal with insect problems, smells.”

Superintendent house

A nearby house donated by former district Superintendent Robert Fisher and his wife after they died, which was intended for future superintendents' use, will be demolished, according to a presentation dedicated to the bond proposal.

The home “has fallen into disrepair and is currently unoccupied,” the presentation reads. In its wake will rise a new 2,250-square-foot ranch home with a similarly-sized basement used by the district for seasonal storage.

Building a new home for future leaders at a time of rising housing costs across the Island means “the best possible person can actually take the job” and be “a part of the community,” school board Vice President Nick Finazzo told Newsday in a phone interview.

“We look forward to bringing the neighbors in on the planning, to make sure that it fits with the esthetics of the neighborhood,” Finazzo said.