WOODSTOCK — On Monday night, the Mountain Views School District Board will consider cost estimates on three options for addressing the maintenance needs of the Woodstock Union Middle and High School buildings. The board hopes to bring another bond measure to voters in September.

The board’s consideration comes following the voters’ defeat on Town Meeting Day in March of a $99 million bond to fund construction of a new middle and high school building. Voters in the Vermont school district’s seven member towns — Barnard, Bridgewater, Killington, Plymouth, Pomfret, Reading and Woodstock — rejected the proposal by a margin of 340 votes, 1,910-1,570.

Following the defeat, the board conducted a survey of community members and began to explore other strategies to meet the needs of the aging school building, which serves 440 students and was built in 1956, with the middle school addition completed in 1968.

A summary of the 1,400 survey results released by the supervisory union in April stated that both yes and no voters shared concerns about the lack of state funding for school construction and maintenance and worried about the tax impacts of the bond.

For the no voters, “it was really about that sticker price,” Ben Ford, a Woodstock representative to the supervisory union board and the new building committee’s chairman, said in an interview earlier this week.

The survey data stated that many no voters would have preferred to see a plan to renovate, rather than rebuild, the existing school building.

After the Town Meeting Day vote, the School Board began working with the project’s architects, Lavallee Brensinger, along with PCI consulting and builders PC Construction on the feasibility of design modifications.

The planning process identified three options for addressing the needs of the aging buildings: renovation, replacement of the high school wing only and constructing an entirely new building, which is similar to the original proposal that voters rejected in March.

According to presentation materials included with the agenda for Monday’s meeting, cost estimates for a renovation project w ould be just over $100 million, with a completion date of September 2030. Replacing just the high school wing would cost about $92 million and could be completed by the spring of 2029.

A plan for renovating, rather than rep lacing, the existing school building was not brought to voters in March because “once the price tag got over $50 million, it seemed like you weren’t getting a lot of bang for your buck,” Ford said.

Rehabilitating the existing structure would be limiting, and it would not make the buildings compatible with 21st century student needs for flexible, collaborative learning spaces, STEM education and school safety, Ford added. Straight hallways lined with lockers, for example, present a security challenge in an age where schools must confront the possibility of firearm violence.

The price of a complete renovation would range from $100 million to $105 million, depending on what cost-cutting measures are adopted to modify the original proposal, which could include the results of a value engineering analysis to determine where space and material costs could be reduced.

There is a cost to doing nothing as well. The district budgeted $200,000 per year above routine maintenance costs this year to address ongoing challenges with the existing building, Mountain Views Supervisory Union Superintendent Sherry Souza said in March.

“Our existing buildings are failing,” Ford said.

Last year, a failure in the heating system cost taxpayers $1.3 million to repair. Problems with the septic system have caused overflows and will require repair, and there are cracks in load-bearing walls. As the building materials degrade, inefficient exterior walls drive up heating costs.

The school’s leadership has been preparing possible responses to a catastrophic failure of one or more of the buildings systems, which could render it uninhabitable, Building and Grounds Director Joe Rigoli said in March.

Vermont suspended its School Construction Aid program in 2007, and districts around the state are facing the costs of decades of deferred maintenance. A School Construction Aid Task Force report presented to the Legislature in February identified an estimated need for $6 billion over the next 20 years to address urgent deficiencies in school buildings.

About $3.5 million in private donations have been committed to the Woodstock school project so far, though some of those were made based on enthusiasm for the original plans for a net-zero building with geothermal heating and cooling. It is not certain that the donors would remain committed to revised design options, Ford said.

The Mountain Views School District board meeting will take place on Monday, June 3 at 6:30 p.m. in the Woodstock Union Middle School gymnasium and via Zoom.

The board will then hold a special meeting on June 17 to decide which option to bring to voters, with a p ossible election in September, Ford said.

Christina Dolan can be reached at cdolan@vnews.com or 603-727-3208.