AUBURN — A day after voters overwhelmingly approved a $122 million high school, a campaign to raise $3 million to $5 million to reduce the impact on local taxes was next on the agenda.
Superintendent Katy Grondin said Wednesday the School Department is setting its sights on forming a committee to help organize a local fundraising effort.
The new Edward Little High School will be the most expensive school in Maine, with a wing for career and technical programs, room for 1,100 students, geothermal heating and cooling, a top-notch athletic stadium with a turf football field and a 1,200-seat performing arts center.
This illustration shows how the new Edward Little High School will look when it opens in 2023.
It will be built with $105.9 million in state money and $16.1 million to be raised locally.
Adam Hansen, business manager for the Auburn School Department, said all of the money raised in the campaign will go toward reducing the impact on local property taxes.
Construction is set to begin in the spring of 2021, with a tentative completion date of fall 2023.
Grondin said Wednesday she has “been doing some stuff behind the scenes, in terms of finding people or businesses interested in being lead donors” in the fundraising campaign.
She said the Building Committee on Tuesday will talk more about fundraising.
“We need to figure out who’s going to take the lead, who will co-chair the committee, things like that,” Grondin said. “It’s a big-time commitment for whoever does it. We’ll be collecting some ideas and names of people interested in doing the job.”
Grondin said a fundraising committee will also have to talk about policies related to naming rights.
“With fundraising for something (of this magnitude), the small things, like selling blankets or bottle drives, don’t really get you what you need,” Grondin said. “A lot of that comes from your larger donors, and sometimes they’ll donate money if they get naming rights to a building or a field. We need to figure out a policy for how stuff like that works.”
The new school will have an impact on Auburn’s workforce, according to Beckie Conrad, president and CEO of the Lewiston-Auburn Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce.
Conrad said the new high school will help strengthen Auburn’s workforce and “educate our youth to be our future employees.”
She added that many students from Auburn are “on wait lists to get into Lewiston Regional Technical Center programs.”
“The new ELHS will have programs not offered in Lewiston and will add capacity for those with waiting lists,” Conrad said. “The school will also have facilities to compete with high schools around the state and New England, giving us the competitive advantage to recruit families to relocate to fill our jobs.”
Some younger students from Auburn expressed excitement for their new school and at the prospect of being among the first students to attend it.
Ansley Watson, a seventh-grader at Auburn Middle School who will be a senior when the new school opens, said she had heard a lot about the new school’s features, including its 1,200-seat performing arts center.
“I do track and field and drama, so I’m most excited for the new fields and the new theater,” Watson said. “I’m excited that the students will have access to new facilities. It seems like it’s going to be a really good school.”
Watson’s younger brother, Ace, who will be a sophomore when the new high school opens, plays soccer and lacrosse. He said he was looking forward to using the school’s new athletic fields.
Brent Watson, Ansley and Ace’s father and a language arts teacher at Auburn Middle School, said he recently visited Edward Little High School with his students and was shocked at how hot the building was compared to Auburn Middle School, which has central air conditioning.
“I think one of the best things these kids are going to have in the new school is climate control,” Watson said. “It’s hard to concentrate on studies when you’re sitting in a hot classroom, so central air will be huge for them.”
mdaigle@sunmediagroup.net
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