FAQ

See the graph below around how this project will affect your school age kid.

We have already exceeded the capacity of our existing schools. Our infrastructure does not support our students’ basic educational needs. We need a sustainable solution to house our current and growing population.

The new unified school will be located on a site in the Scarborough Downs. 

Finding the right location to build a school, especially one that will play such a crucial role for the community for decades to come, is no small task, which is why Scarborough Public Schools was so intentional about building a process which pulled in insight and perspectives from across the community during interactive community forums and combined it with that of subject matter experts and local leaders. 

Over 30 meetings were held between February 2022 and April 2023 with different stakeholders to evaluate sites and understand how each site aligned with the long-term goals of the project. 

Each potential site was evaluated based on eleven selection criteria, including: safety, environment, capacity for future expansion, soil and topography, utilities, transportation safety and traffic, public services, availability, and cost. 

On April 25, 2023 the Building Committee unanimously voted to recommend to the Scarborough School Board that the unified primary school site be located at the Scarborough Downs site.

On April 27, 2023, the Scarborough School Board unanimously voted to endorse the recommended site at the Scarborough Downs.

On Aug 3, 2023, the Town Council authorized the Town Manager to execute the land deal with the Downs.

For more information about the site selection process, the recordings and presentation from the April 25, 2023 Building Committee meeting (Password: z.64g^iX) and April 27, 2023 School Board meeting provide a summary overview of the process, site selection criteria, and community-defined criteria.

The Downs was ultimately chosen from a list of 46 potential sites because it met all of the criteria outlined above and best aligned with the priorities consistently named by the Scarborough community. 

The Downs central location ensures there is equity in travel time to school from anywhere in Scarborough. Its close proximity to the Municipal Campus (consisting of Wentworth, the Middle School, and the High School) keeps Scarborough’s entire student population centrally located and better accommodates families with students at multiple schools. The 20-25 acre area selected provides enough room for future expansion of K-3 population if our Town’s needs grow. This is a solution that can grow with Scarborough for 50+ years, vs. the situation we face with our current schools where we no longer have room to grow. 

We are excited to be able to build the new home for our K-3 population in this central hub of our growing town.

For more information about the site selection process, the recordings and presentation from the April 25, 2023 Building Committee meeting (Password: z.64g^iX) and April 27, 2023 School Board meeting provide a summary overview of the process, site selection criteria, and community-defined criteria.

Traffic flow and commute time was one of the prioritized criteria in the site selection process and a key element in the selection of the Downs. The Downs is centrally located, providing a more equitable commute time across all communities in Scarborough. It also allows for dispersion of traffic via four exit points (Payne Road, Haigis Parkway, Route 1, Trackview/Sawyer Road) easing overall traffic flow in and out of the school.

The close proximity to the Municipal Campus will allow for many K-6 bus routes, streamlining time parents spend supervising bus pick ups and drop offs. Additionally, reorganization of bus routes will allow fewer stops for each bus, creating greater efficiency in commute time. The district calculated bus route times based on the current number of drivers and this coming year’s student population. They used transportation software to map the most efficient routes and then ran the actual routes. The results showed: The transit time of seven routes will not change, six routes will increase by two to nine minutes, and five routes will be 3-8 minutes shorter than the current route. 

Additionally, currently only 3.8% of our K-2 population walks to school. There is the potential this number will increase based on the proximity of many single family homes to the new school site. This increase of walkers lower overall bus commute times as well. 

For parents who chose to transport their own children, there will be two dedicated parent loops at the new school site, one for the lower school and one for the upper school, with extended queuing. This will ensure road traffic is not backed up around the school area and lessen the time that parents wait in drop off and pick up lines. Likewise, the unified school site is less than 1.5 miles from Municipal Campus, easing the transportation burden on parents who might need to pick up students from more than one location. Currently if a parent has a child at one of our outlier schools, it can take 15+ minutes to get from there to the Municipal Campus.

The decision making process for what happens to the existing sites won’t occur until after the new school is moved forward by voters during the November election. The town controls how the properties will be used and will ultimately rely on current zoning, feedback from residents, and a thorough assessment of Town capital needs and priorities at the time to determine best use. The properties won’t be available until the opening of the new school in 2027 and the Town Council will lead the decision process at that time. Possibilities that have been discussed to date include a pre-k learning center, community center site, a potential for satellite library, or recreational programming.

Fostering and empowering a sense of community in an educational setting is crucial for a child’s success. Community provides a sense of belonging, connectedness, and safety for children and builds the foundation required for optimal learning. A sense of community is facilitated structurally by designing a space specific for kids of primary school age and how they feel and react in a space. But it is cultivated through intentional and consistent behavior and a deliberate community-first school culture. 

The new unified school prioritizes community in design and Scarborough school district prioritizes community in its district-wide culture. 

Great care was taken to design the building to meet the community-developed design statement of “an intimate community of innovative, flexible, and inspirational learning neighborhoods that fosters inclusivity, collaboration, and hand-on learning.” The building design breaks down the scale of a unified school into approachable layers of community, achieving a “school within a school” model, similar to the successful model currently experienced by students at Wentworth.

The first level of community separates the building into a “lower primary school” and an “upper primary school,” each with two grade levels and a “main street” that runs down the center of the building, providing access to shared common spaces (such as gyms, cafeteria, library).

Each “school” is then further broken down into 3 “Classroom Neighborhoods” per grade level, with 3-6 classrooms, an Academic Support space, and collaboration space. Special Education spaces are integrated within the grade level wings to foster inclusivity.   

In the unified school plan, the travel distance from the main entry to the furthest classroom is the same distance students must currently travel between those locations at Eight Corners. Additionally, this distance is 200 linear feet shorter than the distance in Wentworth School. 

To accommodate the physical education program needs and schedule of the K-3 students, two elementary sized gymnasiums are provided. There are two gymnasiums that have a dividing curtain so two classes can occur simultaneously in each gym, 4 classes total. These are NOT large gymnasiums like Wentworth and the High School, which are approximately 10,000 sf with bleachers and have the ability to accommodate high school basketball games and bleachers.  Instead, the unified school gyms are 5000 and 7000 square feet, with the larger one including bleachers to accommodate an audience of students for performances and other events.  

These gyms are focused on the academic needs of the K-3 students and serve as a good example of the design philosophy employed throughout the school. They are designed to fit the specific structural and developmental milestone needs of the children. 

The physical design of the educational spaces in the unified school enables students to feel connected with their peers so they can communicate, engage, and learn with and from each other on a small scale, while also having the exposure to and opportunity of a larger collaborative environment. Together with the school culture cultivated by our amazing teachers and staff, our students are able to access a community that will help them thrive. 
 

Why is the Middle School included as part of the our district-wide solution to support Scarborough’s students now and in the future? 

Many of you who visited during our last school tours were most surprised to learn about the impact of overcrowding and structural challenges at the middle school. Despite the amazing ways our middle school staff have adapted and innovated to provide the best for our students, the middle school is severely impacted by overcrowding and structural challenges that are not optimal for the needs of our students during these important years. 

Not only is our entire 6th grade class in portables but students and teachers are forced to share spaces and adapt learning to fit. This means staff members on carts for important subjects like world language, health, and digital citizenship and classes forced to take place in the learning commons, making the ability to focus and concentrate challenging. 

From the design, to the site selection, to the strategic realignment of the K-8 grade breakdown in each school, every decision and consideration for the new unified school has been built for growth. Your YES vote in November is for a long-term, district wide, strategic solution, not a short-term fix. By voting YES, you are investing in the educational success of Scarborough’s student population, now and in the future. The school design and site location provide for projected enrollment and offer opportunities for additional expansion as Scarborough continues to grow as a community. The consolidation of our K-3 population in one school offers numerous operational efficiencies which not only save taxpayers money, but improve educational outcomes by allowing greater collaboration among teachers and staff. 

Your YES vote in November will serve Scarborough for decades to come. 
 

Finding the right size for a school is a balance. You don’t want the school to be so big that you have underutilized spaces or too many spaces for the need, but you also need adequate learning spaces to support 21st century teaching and learning, now and in the future. A well designed school includes room to grow so it doesn’t max out capacity the day it opens, as was the case for Scarborough Middle School, a state funded school project.

The spaces designed in the unified school are all identified NEEDS, not “wants.” Every space in this building has been carefully identified through numerous programming meetings and the development of a Space Allocation Workbook (SAW). This is a tool used by school designers to determine what existing program spaces serve the current and future needs and what space deficiencies exist that need to be accounted for in the school.
 

The existing K-2 schools lack educational spaces for the way education is delivered today and are required for researched best educational outcomes. When they were constructed in the 1950s, 21st century teaching and learning was not accounted for. This includes elements such as special education spaces, social emotional learning, and  peer collaboration. Most of these buildings do not even have sufficient staff restrooms. 

Additionally, the population in Scarborough was approximately 20% of what it is today. The new school is designed for flexibility and for future growth in order to ensure its longevity in serving the Scarborough community.
 

How did we arrive at a design population to account for the needs of today and into the future? 

The 2023 Scarborough Schools Enrollment Study accounts for an increase in live births, housing starts, and in-migration. (View Full Enrollment Study)

We identified the year with the highest projected enrollment for the K-3 population: the 2030-31 school year, which has a projected population of 1076 students. A contingency factor of 5% was added, bringing us to 1130 students for a design population. Further contingency is factored in by designing to the low or middle of the Scarborough classroom student loading range (the number of students per class). When looking at a max target of 20 students per K through 2 classrooms and 22 students in the 3rd grade classrooms the school, classrooms, and cores spaces are designed for a max capacity of 1230 students. Future growth beyond that has been accounted for in future additions.
 

November 7th, 2023

Voters will have the opportunity to secure a successful future for Scarborough students and invest in the most fiscally responsible solution for Scarborough taxpayers at the referendum Election on November 7th (early and absentee voting opens four weeks prior). 
 

Should this project not be moved forward by voters in November, Scarborough Schools will not have enough room for enrolling students for the 2027 school year. This means not only will Scarborough not be able to offer students the educational structures they need and deserve, but taxpayers will have to fund triage, short-term fixes vs. investing in a long-term strategic solution. 

Ten years in the making, the solution on the November ballot has pulled in top experts across education, architecture, and community planning as well as the community itself to bring the best investment educationally and financially for the Scarborough community to voters in November. 

When we vote YES to support the education of Scarborough’s future leaders, we vote to support every aspect of our growing and vibrant community.