By JOSEPH B. NADEAU

WOONSOCKET — The school department needs additional funding but won’t go so far as selling off a building’s name to get it.

That was the view members of the school committee offered Wednesday night while discussing the option of selling naming rights to the two new middle schools under construction off Hamlet Avenue and Villa Nova Street.
No one had a figure on how much money the naming of a local school could bring into the district and thus far there isn’t a specific person or company bidding on that opportunity.
But School Superintendent Robert J. Gerardi Jr. told the committee the option of naming rights has been debated by the building committee supervising the $80 million local project and was looking for direction on the topic.
“We wanted to know if we should continue investigating this or if it was a moot point,” he said.  The downturn of economy, Gerardi noted, may well have eliminated any interest a company or philanthropist would have in acquiring such rights.
Although Woonsocket High School and the middle school do not currently bear the name of an individual, the school department has dedicated several of its schools to individuals in the past. Local philanthropist Edward Harris, a mill owner who entertained Abraham Lincoln in the city in 1860, had the original city high school on High School Street named in his honor many years ago. When that building was torn down to make way for a new elementary school at the site, the new building was rededicated with Harris’ name.
The same step was taken when the former Pothier Elementary School was closed and converted to condos. The new elementary school on Robinson Street was rededicated to the late Aram J. Pothier, a onetime city mayor who became governor of the state.
Woonsocket Mayor Kevin K. Coleman, who built several new schools during his administration, was honored with honored with dedication of the Coleman Elementary School on Second Avenue, and former Deputy Superintendent of Schools Leo A. Savoie had his name given to the former East Woonsocket Elementary School on Mendon Road.
 While such dedications have been made, members of the committee felt selling off that tribute would go too far in a bid to far to raise money for schools.
 School Committeewoman Eleanor Nadeau said such fundraising attempts should be limited to collecting an endowment for a particular school program and in turn recognize the donation with a plaque at a location in the school.
  “But we’re not going to sell the naming of a building to the highest bidder,” she said.
 School Committeewoman Linda Majewski also ruled out support for such a move.
The middle school project was a community-wide effort that required lots of work to get the $80 million bonding for the schools approved, she noted.
“It should stay the Woonsocket Middle School complex,” she said. “Everyone was involved and it was such a community project,” Majewski said. It is the community, she added, who will being pay off the schools’ bonding for years to come.
 School Committeewoman Michelle Williams also favored retaining Woonsocket Middle School as the name whether that included “complex” or not. “This was a community effort and everyone backed the building of these two middle schools for our children’s future,” she said.
 The committee did not take a formal vote on the issue but School Committeewoman Anita MacGuire-Forcier and Committee Chairman Marc Dubois also indicated they would not support selling off the schools name rights.
 “I am very much against selling that name to the highest bidder,” Dubois said. “I don’t care how much of a deficit we have, we are not going to sell off our reputation,” he said.
 The buildings could be identified individually, he said. The building going up near Hamlet as the Hamlet Building and the one near Villa Nova by that street, he said.
 But selling the name, Dubois argued, would be no better than putting “billboards” on the roof of the schools to raise money.