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By Philip R. Devlin
(April 21, 2025) — It is instructive to look back upon the opening of the high school in 1975-1976. The school’s opening was well publicized, with lengthy articles and many photos in Connecticut newspapers. The word most commonly used to describe the new high school was “showcase.” It had amenities such as an indoor track, a swimming pool, a TV studio, a cosmetology lab, the Cougar Cafe, and a seminar room in the C Wing. When Superintendent Roland Jolie saw on my resume that I had played hockey at UConn, he told me that the original plan for the school had also called for the construction of a hockey arena, but that wetlands restrictions made the District choose between a bus garage or a hockey rink. They chose the bus garage.
Why was HK such a showcase high school built with all these amenities, particularly in a school whose first graduating class in 1978 had only 97 and whose second class had barely 120 in 1979? The answer is simple. At the time Connecticut state law encouraged the building of regional high schools by paying for an amazing 80% of the construction costs! State law encouraged an expansive campus by funding it at that level, so the square footage got piled on, and it would have been still bigger with a hockey rink! Low class enrollment in the 1970’s did not restrict the size of the high school.
Ironically, now state construction reimbursement guidelines are much more restrictive regarding square footage, so that regional schools built in the 1970’s that followed existing state law and took advantage of the 80% funding to construct expansive campuses now get penalized for having too much square footage when it’s time to renovate their schools! Thus, they must demolish parts of their building to qualify for maximum funding. Following existing law in the 1970’s should not come back to haunt you later on. Perhaps a legislative carve-out is in order for regional schools that were encouraged to build large in accordance with existing state law in the 1970’s.
Thus, the proposed HK building plan calls for the complete demolition of the old middle school building attached to the high school. That includes the former middle school gym. As detailed recently at the public forum by an insightful Killingworth resident, that gym is greatly valued and used extensively by the community year-round and by high school athletic teams for practice. It has also been a voting site for decades. There is a daycare center there, too, and offices for the Resident State Trooper. It would be a shame to lose such a valued community resource.
There are several rarely used rooms in the old middle school that could be better used. Both Haddam-Killingworth Youth and Family Services and the HK Recreation Department are currently in the white house, which used to be the District’s Central Office and previously was the home of the Waibel family, farmers who cultivated the land there; in fact, much of the current high school was built in a former apple and peach orchard. Would it not be better to re-locate those two organizations from the white house to the old middle school and sell the white house? How about leasing the white house to a small business? 80-90% of the HK Rec employees are high school kids and much of HKYFS deals with high school kids as well. Having both of those organizations more proximate to the high school students in the currently under-used former middle school would make a lot of sense. It would also save money.
