With the town’s new high school up and running, the School Board is taking a hard look at the rest of the district’s facilities and asking residents to get in on the process.

The board held the first of several planned public forums focusing on the district’s future facility needs late last month, a discussion that school officials are describing as a success. According to Vice Chairman Michael Hatem, roughly 75 residents turned out to voice their concerns and share their thoughts.

“Most of the commentary was all positive,” he said. “We were looking for input from the public for what they thought was the best steps to take forward with the population crunch we’re seeing now.”

Hatem said the board came to the meeting with four proposals. One option would update the district’s current facilities to today’s needs at a cost of roughly $18 million, while the other three included reconfiguring the community’s existing schools or possibly building a new school, all with varying price tags, according to Hatem.

“Right now we have the middle school, the brand new high school and two elementary schools: the Golden Brook and Center schools. Center School and the middle school are both in good shape, but need some maintenance. Golden Brook is now our biggest school since kindergarten was added and is in the worst physical condition,” Hatem said. “What we’re looking for is how do we restructure the district?”

A plan to build a facility designed solely to house kindergarten students met with criticism after residents voiced concerns over the cost of hiring a new principal, according to Hatem. Residents prefer keeping the district’s current four-school configuration, he said.

Board Chairman Bruce Anderson said keeping the residents and voters in the loop was the leading factor behind holding the public forum. The public discussion allowed the board to lay out their concerns when it came to the district’s facility needs and solicit input before moving ahead with a new plan on the March ballot.

“People are concerned about the tax rate. What we were showing them are some ideas on how we build for the future. We just finished paying off a bond for the expansion of the Center School and now that building is almost overcrowded again. If we have to do something new ... give (the residents) a solution that’s not as soon as you pay the bond off you have to do this again,” Anderson said. “I think they understand there is an issue. I think they understand that the facilities getting overcrowded will have an effect on student performance.”

Still, Anderson said the board was sensitive to the state of the economy and did not plan to put any large spending articles before voters this year. Voters would more than likely be asked to sign off on architectural designs in March, ranging somewhere between $800,000 to $500,000. Anderson said the board would have a better idea of the cost as they moved forward.

“When I came on the board five-and-a-half years ago it was at the point where we had to the build the high school. We were kind of in a position to build our own high school, but in this case we’re starting from a blank piece of paper,” he said. “We have facilities and we have to make the best use of them we can to expand for the future ... Residents can make some comments, and I think what it does is we get ideas back from the public and the public can understand the thought process to how we got to where we are. It gets voter buy-in.”

The board plans to hold several more public forums on the district’s facilities this year, but no specific times or dates have been set, according to Hatem.