While school may be out, the Warwick School Committee continued their work on Tuesday with their regularly scheduled monthly meeting.

The meeting began with a member of the public asking about rumors regarding construction on both high schools and the size of school athletic facilities.

“Do we have an original concept for the plans and what we’ve cut; what we are getting rid of?” Sean Rainey asked. “These things need to be open for public oversight- are we just building these because we need them, and will not include any of the state-of-the-art facilities that we were promised?”

Those claims were refuted by Chris Spiegel, a senior project manager at LeftField Project Management, the owner’s project manager for both high schools.

According to Spiegel, the schematic design of Pilgrim and Toll Gate have yet to be completed, though he noted both projects are still on schedule and on budget.

“We are still very, very early in this process,” he said.

Some early hangups, Spiegel said, have been issues with the land for the new Toll Gate, with LeftField trying to avoid construction on the nearby ledge in order to make the building as structurally sound as possible.

Spiegel said that as of right now, there have been no cuts to the educational programs at both schools, and a turf field, football stadium, softball field, baseball field, tennis courts and a track and field throwing area are all planned. LeftField is looking at both 750- and 850-seat auditoriums, though Spiegel said that the sizes of the schools’ auditoriums were not set in stone.

“Nothing has been decided, or presented, or even stamped on a drawing as of this point,” Spiegel said.

Spiegel said that, LeftField is looking at having gyms with a capacity of around 1,000 students. School Committee Chair Shaun Galligan asked Spiegel to change that number to make sure that the gyms had the capacity to fit the current student population for each individual school. 2023 enrollment at the two schools exceeded 1,100.

The first visible  signs of construction, Spiegel said, are planned for next Tuesday, when enabling work on both sites will begin.

While the School Committee and Spiegel did not set an exact date for the public design showcase, both agreed on late August as the best time to host a forum for the public to comment on the designs of both schools. Spiegel also said that a website showcasing the projects would be ready by early August at the latest.

“Changes in design cost pennies,” Spiegel said. “Changes in construction cost millions.”

Warwick shows growth in reading, math scores

Director of Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment Lisa Schultz and Director of Elementary Education Patti Cousineau gave a presentation on Warwick’s elementary and middle schools’ iReady Diagnostic Testing results.

As of right now, 63% of students are considered proficient in reading, and 58% of students are proficient in math. Of those numbers, 41% of students were considered to be in iReady’s highest category- called “mid- or above grade level”- and 35% of students were in that same category for math.

That, according to Schultz, is a jump from last year, and a massive jump from the start of the year, when only 35% of students were considered at or above their grade level in reading and 22% were in math. At the start of the year, only 17% of students were in the highest category for reading, and only 7% were for math.

Winman also showed among the highest growth in reading across the district- something which Schultz said was rare at the middle school level.

Councilman David Testa said the numbers show Warwick could become one of the top school districts in the state once those students reach the high school level.

“In math, the students at or above grade level grew by 502% [since the start of the school year],” Testa said. “That’s a staggering number. We’re not a small district- we’ve got 8,000 kids in our district.”

Other meeting business

The Council approved the purchase of three kilns to be used at Warwick Veterans and Winman Middle Schools. Two of those kilns will be going to Winman; the space dedicated for kilns at Vets only has room for one.

“At Winman, we’re going to need to take over the whole storage room between the art rooms, and we’re able to get two kilns in that room,” Director of Capital Projects Steve Gothberg said. “One of the considerations was ADA accessibility for the kiln rooms- so we were able to get two at Winman, and one at Vets, because there’s just no way to fit more than one in there and have ADA accessibility.”

Those kilns will also be serving the high schools, which have been without them since this past December. While kilns are planned to be in the new high schools, Pilgrim and Toll Gate students will be going without them in their buildings until then.

Finance Director Brandon Bohl also announced that Warwick Public Schools had received $863,924 in state aid that they had not budgeted. Bohl recommended putting $350,000 of that money towards the Capital Improvements and Buildings budget, $250,000 towards repairing the tennis courts at Vets, and the remaining $263,924 towards salaries for employees.

Ultimately, the committee approved an amended version of Bohl’s recommendation, approving putting the $863,924 towards those three items as well as hiring a school resource officer for Winman Middle School without assigning specific dollar amounts to each item.

Gothberg also mentioned work to reopen Oakland Beach Elementary School, saying that while work on the school is running longer than he had hoped, the building will be ready for students on the first day of school. Gothberg is hoping that the Oakland Beach will be ready for a walkthrough by the last week of July.