The Warwick School Committee voted on Wednesday to send Toll Gate High School’s Stage 3 Schematic Design to the Rhode Island Department of Education with comments.

Steve Guglielmo, Saccoccio and Associates’ principal architect, showed the School Committee the plans that were submitted to RIDE on Friday.

Plans for the building were largely the same as what was viewed at the special meeting on Aug. 21. The new school would be located, Guglielmo explained, to make sure that the existing Career and Technical Center is easily accessible. 

“We dropped [the lower] level low enough where we can get access from this level across the street to the CTC building,” Guglielmo said. “So the students, the CTC and woodshop are in this location. Students would either take the elevator or the stairs down if they’re going to the CTC building, and it’s a short walk down.”

A main concern of multiple School Committee members is the safety of the open second floor balcony overlooking the cafeteria, which they argued could be used to throw objects at students in the cafeteria — or throw students over the 4-foot railing.

“For a college facility, for an office building with adults occupying it, I think it looks amazing, but I’m thinking about the mentality of a majority of the occupants of the building,” School Committee Chair Shaun Galligan said.

Chris Spiegel, senior project manager at LeftField Project Management, said he would look into additional safety measures and noted it would likely be changed before construction, though he also said that there likely would not be a full wall due to the loss of natural lighting throughout much of the building. Additionally, he said, it would go against guidance from the Northeast Collaborative for High Performance Schools.

Another concern raised by committee member Karen Bachus is the number of classrooms in the plan. Guglielmo said 20 “core” classrooms and 84 total teaching spaces are planned throughout the school. Teaching spaces, according to Guglielmo, are any rooms in the school that can be used for education, and include spaces such as the gym, auditorium and “learning stair” overlooking the dining commons.

Spiegel said that the school is designed to fit the vision of 21st century learning.

“The reason why we don’t have corridors of identical classrooms stacked on each other is that’s not a tenet of 21st century education,” Spiegel said. “Flexibility is the name of the game… and having a wide variety of different types of teaching spaces allows teachers to collaborate and allows them to do different types of project-based learning.”

Other concerns mentioned by School Committee members related to the open concept of the building and its outdoor common area on the south side of the school, with many citing concerns following the fatal shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia. Spiegel said safety measures are designed throughout the school and that there are safety lessons to take from the Apalachee shooting, which he would be willing to discuss with the committee in private.

Concerns about the size of the gymnasium, also mentioned during the special meeting on Aug. 21, were brought up as well. Spiegel said that while gym size was codified by RIDE per student and RIDE would not pay for a variance, however, there would be ways to enlarge the gyms of both schools.

As for Pilgrim, Spiegel said, the project has been going smoothly. The estimated cost of the building, in fact, had gone down since the last time that it was before the committee, with Spiegel referring to it as “substantially” on budget.

“There have been some significant changes to that building, and you guys will see them soon,” Spiegel said. “It’s nothing to do with the educational program — this has to do with other ways of building more efficiently, the amount of glazing in that building, things like that.”

While RIDE still has not given LeftField any feedback on Pilgrim, Spiegel said he does not anticipate any issues due to multiple meetings already held with RIDE School Construction Coordinator Joseph da Silva that Spiegel characterized as some of the most positive he’s ever had. Toll Gate, he estimated, was about six weeks behind Pilgrim in the planning phase.

So far, Spiegel said, $5.4 million of the $350 million allocated for the project has been spent, with the majority of that money going towards design fees.

Following Spiegel’s and Guglielmo’s presentations, Galligan asked Spiegel if mid-to-late October would work for the next special meeting. Spiegel said that he would like to have feedback from RIDE on both schools — and changes likely requested by them — before the public takes another look, but anticipates that to be between now and then.