Plans for Old Tibbetts School Site Announced

Wednesday, June 28, 2017 at 3:09 PM

Budget crunch will not allow school district to move the Farmington Family School to the site. School district may want to sell the property to the city. The track will remain maintained and open.

Update 12/15/17

From Farmington School Superintendent Dr. Schmidt: Budget crunch will not allow school district to move the Farmington Family School to the site. School district may want to sell the property to the city. The track will remain maintained and open.

New Plans

Farmington Municipal Schools Superintendent Dr. Eugene Schmidt and Chief of Operations Ted Lasiewicz discussed the future of the old Tibbetts Middle School property in Farmington. This morning on KSJE 90.9FM, Lasiewicz said most of the old school is scheduled to be torn down between July and November of this year. The library will not be demolished. The building, which served as Farmington High School for a time, has been added onto extensively over the years and because of the district's MOU (Memorandum of Understanding) with the state Public Education Department which awarded the district several million dollars in state money to help pay for construction of the new Tibbetts Middle School, the old building cannot be used for student instruction. Lasiewicz says the district does have a plan for the future use of the property.

The Details

Dr. Schmidt said the Farmington Municipal School Board will be asked to approve the proposal at their July meeting to use the old Tibbetts Middle School library (the newest addition on the property) as administration space for the Farmington Family School: a education effort with local home-schooled children and their parents that is currently being housed at Northeast Elementary School. Dr. Schmidt says the program is growing and quickly running out of space at Northeast Elementary School. The district plans to use portable classrooms (which will soon be unneeded with completion of the new Farmington High School classrooms in December 2017) and move them to the old Tibbetts site. Because the new school will have fewer students and staff than old Tibbetts had during its operation, school officials say the problems of traffic congestion in the neighborhood will not be repeated.

Community Use

Both Dr. Schmidt and Lasiewicz emphasized that the track and field areas of the property will remain open and accessible to the public (even during the demolition).

Listen to the audio to hear more about the plans for the old Tibbetts Middle School property.

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