The burden of overcrowded schools are continuing to prompt the District 428 school board, principals and various officials and residents to consider alternatives to accommodate students and faculty.

John Cinelli, principal of Burnidge Cassell Associates, spoke to the school board Tuesday regarding such construction plans viable for four schools: Chesebro, Clinton Rosette, Huntley and the vacant Malta High School.

Within Chesebro, Cinelli said the original plan in the past referendum was to add a multiple purpose gym to the school. An alternate option, though, would be to create an additional classroom by limiting the size of the proposed multiple purpose gym. The plan would cost about $770,000 to construct.

The key components to the Huntley Middle School renovations would be the remodeling of the art and music rooms while also increasing safety and accessibility to the school. With no additions proposed with Huntley, the entire cost would be about $2.75 million.

Within Clinton Rosette Middle School, the plan calls for about $1.15 million to be spent on lighting, a corridor addition and enhancing handicap capabilities.

Cinelli said with a student capacity of 205 students at the vacant Malta High School, the cost would be $993,000. With 275 students, additional infrastructure and maintenance issues would need to be addressed, raising the cost to to about $1.5 million. With 425 students, the school would have to receive better power distribution and a renovated second floor, creating a new price tag of about $3.2 million.

School Board President Tom Teresinski said he’d like the timeline of whatever option is taken on Malta High School to be finished and ready for students by fall 2004.

Fresh off discussing these numbers, the school board heard aspects of the district’s financial status from Linda Rafanello, vice president of the Public Finance Division for Harris Bank.

She said one option would be either to issue bonds with a tax levy or issue them without one. Issuing a bond to fund projects such as the ones proposed at the meeting could be utilized through a 1997 intergovernmental agreement with the city that would allow the city to use TIFF funds to pay off a bond used by the district.

Another possibility would be a deft certificate, something that Rafanello said works like a home loan in that it is determined by how much money can be paid annually, yearly interest rates, and what can be borrowed. For instance, if the school board borrowed $7 million over 10 years, they would have to pay $900,000 per year to meet the debt service.

Rafanello said the only way to issue debt service would be through voters.

Superintendent Brian Ali touched upon enrollment projections for the upcoming years and how to provide as much additional space as possible within various schools. One such move could be making two additional classrooms in Cortland so that students living there who had to relocate to other schools because of overflow could return.

School board member Holly Wallace offered the idea of moving pre-K students to St. Mary’s Church as a way to both alleviate overcrowded schools and better centralize the pre-K program throughout the district.

Ali said despite the problems facing the district, he is sure they will be able to accommodate K-4 students and hopefully be ready by school year 2004-2005 to accommodate a K-5 concept.