Parents speak out against plans for consolidated Wallingford high school

The future of Wallingford's high schools was the focus of a meeting held on Monday night.

During the Wallingford Board of Education meeting, talks of a new consolidated high school continued.

The proposed project would combine Lyman Hall and Sheehan high schools into a brand-new building for all 1,500 students.

On Monday night, representatives from architecture firm SLAM Collaborative and Colliers, the management company that’s overseeing the project, answered questions regarding their draft of educational specifications for One New Wallingford High School that was presented back in December.

The project itself was preliminarily approved in 2023.

Superintendent Danielle Bellizzi said the men would only answer the questions pertaining to the educational specifications of the draft.

They displayed what the school could look like, from larger and more modern classrooms, to shared faculty space.

There would be 38 academic classrooms, eight seminar rooms and 14 science labs for a total of 60 academic spaces. There would also be “themed spaces” for technical education, culinary, early education, interior design, business and health sciences.

There are currently 950 students at Lyman Hall and 694 students at Sheehan, according to the presentation.

One board member questioned why teachers wouldn’t have their own classrooms.

“In today’s modern design of schools,” the architect said, “because of the premium of square footage, and as you saw, with the state lawful standards, we rarely design schools these days where every teacher owns a classroom 100% of the time.”

Of the people in attendance, a few parents spoke out against the project, taking issue with the classroom sizes.

“The conditions that the Wallingford staff is going to be teaching in, that’s the conditions that my kids are gonna be learning in,” one mom said. “The focus seems to be so much on the efficiency of space, that I’m concerned we’re gonna be losing that individual approach to be able to reach kids. Conserving so much to have classrooms be more full and not have space for teachers to interact with kids.”

People against the project have formed a Facebook group called, “Wallingford Citizens Opposed To One High School.”

“The magic that happens in the classroom and I feel like that’s gonna be lost if you’re talking about like, a school that’s Ikea sized,” parent Rebecca Bozarth said.

The board did not make any decisions on Monday night and are exploring getting more input from the community before moving along further.

It’s unclear where the school would be built and how much the project would cost, though a portion would get reimbursed by the state.

NBC Connecticut asked the town council for comment on the project but did not hear back.