The views stated here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the editors of this newspaper. We welcome supporting or opposing views on any published item. Received September 21, 2026.
Haddam-Killingworth High School serves 465 students this year, a number that has been declining for years, with no evidence the trend will reverse. Yet on September 24, 2026 taxpayers in Haddam and Killingworth are being asked to approve $151.9 million in renovations, with a local share of $77.2 million. Much of that cost goes toward preserving facilities sized for a student population the District no longer has.
Many voters don’t realize the State of Connecticut has already flagged HKHS as oversized for its enrollment. State school construction reimbursement is tied to a formula based on square feet per pupil. Reporting on a July 2024 RSD17 Board of Education meeting noted that “the state considers our schools oversized based on our student enrollment,” and that “this requires the District to apply for a waiver to get the reimbursement percentage for renovations.” In other words, under the state’s own formula, HKHS would not qualify for full reimbursement at its current size. The district needed special permission to keep the building this big.
And the waiver wasn’t sought to improve classrooms or labs. RSD17’s own project materials describe it plainly: the space waiver is what “allows us to retain features such as our Tech Ed., Auditorium, Fieldhouse, and Pool, while fully supporting academic needs.” The District says keeping these spaces doesn’t come at the expense of academics. Maybe so, but that’s a different question from whether a 465-student high school needs them in the first place. A field house, a competition pool, and a full auditorium are not what the state’s per-pupil formula was built around. They’re what’s left over from a much larger school.
That’s not speculation about the building’s age — it’s the District’s own description. RSD17 has stated that three of its four school buildings are more than fifty years old. HKHS was designed for an era of larger regional enrollment and a different model of vocational education. Renovating it at its current footprint doesn’t just fix aging infrastructure. It re-commits the District to carrying that older, bigger footprint forward for another fifty years.
That distinction matters because of how the money keeps flowing after the ribbon-cutting. Once a building exists, its operating costs — heating, staffing, maintenance, insurance — scale with square footage, not with how many students are enrolled. If HKHS enrollment keeps falling the way it has, taxpayers won’t just be paying off a $77.2 million bond. They’ll be paying, year after year, to operate a pool, a field house, and an auditorium sized for a school considerably larger than the one we actually have.
There’s a real argument to be made that a shared pool and field house benefit the wider Haddam-Killingworth community, not just students — RSD17’s own materials make exactly that case, noting these facilities also serve “the broader Haddam-Killingworth community” and neighboring towns whose teams use them. That may well be true, and it may be worth funding. But if that’s the real justification, it should be presented to voters as what it is: a community recreation facility, funded and debated on those terms — not folded into a school construction bond where it inflates the project’s size and cost under the heading of education.
The fact that HKHS needs improvement doesn’t change the fact that ADA compliance, Title IX compliance, and the outdated building systems are genuine and well-documented issues which should be addressed. However, the aim of repairing the existing problems is quite different from the objective of preserving every square foot that the state allows us to keep. The voters who will be voting on 24 September should know exactly what the $151.9 million is actually being spent on.
I will vote No — not because HKHS doesn’t need work, but because this plan asks us to pay for a building sized to yesterday’s enrollment and yesterday’s assumptions, not tomorrow’s reality.
GM Huff, Killingworth
Spot on letter. I’ve been shouting the fact that the footprint is too large and that we will have to pay to maintain, heat, cool, insure, etc. a much larger building than required for our student population.
In addition, when those other items were put in our original school; the state funding for reimbursement was so generous that all those “extra’s” were added. They are NOT sustainable going forward considering our two towns have captial improvements needed within each town. Our schools cannot exist as an island unto themselves. They have to “fit” and be “right sized” within our towns.
Also in Killingworth I keep reading there are more senior citizens than there are students enrolled in the high school. Whatever project gets done and funded needs to fit financailly for ALL parties in both towns, not just school aged children.
Agree 100% all this needs to be fixed….but done so way more prudently than this ask for everything in a too big a footprint proposal.
Yes, HKHS has about 465 students. That is a legitimate factor to consider. But the State’s square-footage formula is fundamentally a reimbursement calculation, not a declaration that everything beyond that number is educationally unnecessary. Connecticut uses allowable square footage and projected enrollment to determine reimbursement eligibility. A space waiver does not magically turn educational programs into “waste.”
What are some of the spaces being preserved? Technical education, automotive, construction, manufacturing and engineering programs, science laboratories, an auditorium, physical-education facilities and other specialized learning spaces. The current project specifically proposes modernizing science labs and Tech Ed facilities while retaining those opportunities.
That matters because the purpose of a high school is not simply to fit the maximum number of students into the minimum number of square feet. It is to give students opportunities.
HKHS may have fewer students than it once did, but those students still deserve access to science, engineering, skilled trades, performing arts, athletics and hands-on career education. Declining enrollment does not mean we should automatically provide fewer opportunities to the students who remain.
And there is another part of this discussion that cannot be ignored: there is a cost to voting No, too.
A No vote does not make the aging HVAC, electrical, accessibility, security and building-envelope problems disappear. Those systems will still have to be repaired, replaced and maintained with taxpayer dollars. “No” does not mean $0.
There is also a timing cost. According to the District, getting the project onto the current state priority list avoided an estimated $6 million in inflation impact, use of the 2026 reimbursement rate reduced the estimated local share by another $1.6 million, and approval of athletic components for reimbursement reduced local costs by an estimated $4.7 million. The District describes the approximately $74.8 million state commitment as contingent on local referendum approval.
That doesn’t mean voters shouldn’t scrutinize every dollar. They absolutely should. But the comparison cannot honestly be “$151.9 million versus nothing.” The comparison is between the proposed comprehensive renovation and whatever repairs, replacements, future construction, inflation and potentially different reimbursement conditions come with the alternative.
A person can reasonably debate whether every athletic or community-oriented component is worth its cost. But that is very different from portraying the space waiver itself as proof that the school is unnecessarily large.
The real question is not simply:
“How small a building can 465 students fit into?”
It is:
“What educational opportunities do we want those 465 students—and the students who follow them—to have, and what will each alternative actually cost?”
Because doing nothing is not free.
We moved into town in 1999. Soon after a new middle school was built for 50M. 25M to be paid by the district over 22 years. I’m sure costs have risen but a 77M bond seems excessive. The students deserve a safe learning environment. I would ask the board to sharpen their pencils. We will be voting no.