Before the 2013-2014 school year, Hall’s new principal, Dan Zittoun, was given a task: Go around the school and find one big thing that needed to change. And so he did. After speaking with students, teachers, and staff, Mr. Zittoun concluded that Hall’s science labs needed modernization. So, he went to the superintendent and proposed renovating the current labs or building new ones. After a year of consulting with an architectural firm, Mr. Zittoun officially proposed the project: A new wing, housing two floors of labs.

On 24 Apr., 2017, the West Hartford School Board unanimously voted to cut the school budget by upwards of $200,000 after the Town Council decreased the town’s budget by $9.2 million. Such a massive cut had a noticeable impact on the materials provided in school this year. For example, only freshmen received agenda planners from the school, while all other students had to purchase them for $5. Additionally, the school did not guarantee to provide each student a graphing calculator because their price exceeded the school’s fiscal limits. Unsurprisingly, students at Hall felt their school lose funding.

As construction began on the new wing this spring, murmuring about how the project wastes money started to surface around school. Although the chatter was school-wide, the senior class opposed the endeavour the most. In fact, senior football captain Devin Richards says the new science wing is “probably a waste of money.” The other classes are also confused about how the wing is being financed. When asked if the wing was a good investment, the freshmen responded: “Isn’t West Hartford in debt or something?”

Although the project is expensive, the timing of the construction has no correlation with its funding. After the wing got approved, the renovation became part of the town’s Capital Improvement Plan, which gave Hall access to a large fund designated for projects like this. Additionally, the town went to the state to apply for further subsidies, which it received, although we were unable to uncover how much. When the budget cuts were instated, the money used for this project was unaffected. Fundamentally, this means that the new wing is not “a waste of money” both because the money is not coming from the school budget, and because the fund paying for the project was untouched by the budget cuts.

Even though the cuts didn’t affect the new wing’s construction, the project has been modified since it was first proposed. The wing will no longer consist of two stories because building a second floor would have been too expensive. Instead, there will be one floor housing six classrooms. Furthermore, the B200’s will get renovated to make eight new science labs because the new wing needed downsizing. In the end, Hall will have 14 brand new, modernized science labs.

The renovation on the B200’s is scheduled for completion by the start of the 2018-2019 school year. The new wing is planned to be finished by this winter, and should be operational for the start of the second semester of this upcoming year.