By JOSEPH FITZGERALD

NORTH SMITHFIELD — The town’s $30 million middle school project is on time and on budget.
That was the good news School Committeeman Paul Vadenais shared with his colleagues at a committee meeting Tuesday. According to Vadenais, who is also a member of the School Building Committee, the project is on track and the school will open on time when classes begin in September.

Town voters approved the middle school bond in 2006. Three years later, the 105,000-square-foot facility on Providence Pike, designed by Providence-based Robinson Green Beretta Corp., has been essentially completed with doors expected to open in August.
“There are a few issues, but nothing major or big,” Vadenais told the committee. “Right now, we’re going over a punch list of deficiences to be resolved, which is 50 percent done. The furnishings started arriving yesterday and will be coming in over a four-week period. The gym looks fabulous and the track is being sealed this week.”
“We’re on time and on budget,” he added. “The school will be open on time.”
Vadenais said a dedication ceremony and open house for the community will be held on a date to be announced.
“The real good news is that we’ve made up 90 percent of the shortfall (that threatened the opening and operation of the new school due to budget problems this year),” he said.
The 2008-2009 town budget approved by the Town Council two weeks ago provides a total of $20,595,086 for the schools under a compromise worked out with the school department allowing school officials to restore most of the programs and staffing positions threatened during the budget process.

The budget funds the new middle school with the help of an override of the state’s cap on property tax revenues but only on the bond payment for the project covering principal and interest.

The council and school department worked out a plan to cover another $496,000 requested for schools by using $224,000 in surplus school funding, the town’s $147,000 Northern Rhode Island Collaborative settlement award, and $122,000 in town surplus funding, which was added to the school budget to get the middle school open and operating but at no additional cost to the taxpayer.

The new budget will raise taxes on an average $300,000 local home by approximately $324 a year, but that increase covers both the school opening and the town’s increased operating costs.

The agreement between the town and school department will allow the school department to bring back musical instructors at the elementary and middle school level, the middle school athletics program and also restore an all-day kindergarten program at the elementary level.
When the new middle school opens in September, there will also be some changes to the program of studies in tandem with the transition to the new facility, including expansion of the physical education program; changes in the social studies program (including two years of history for seventh and eigth graders; changes in rotating electives; and a new journalism program, among other things.
“We’ve been working hard to get the school open,” School Superintendent Stephen F. Lindberg told the committee.