Niantic Center School is freshly scrubbed, cheery yellow and pleasantly decked out with bright artwork, student projects and picture books. Still, it’s not difficult to see the building’s challenges just below this bright veneer. Among them: a gym and stage no physically handicapped person can easily access, 65-year-old windows that rattle in the wind and no longer block chilly outdoor air, and excess classrooms turned into storage space.

Then there’s security. Visitors walk a considerable distance after being admitted through the front door and before reaching the office.

While the details of the challenges facing East Lyme’s three elementary schools vary from building to building, all share the reality that renovation work is essential to ensure they remain safe and effective learning environments into the foreseeable future. Because of this, the proposed $35.8 million renovation proposal for Niantic Center, Flanders and Lillie B. Haynes elementary schools deserves support.

East Lyme’s elementary school building plan has a long and somewhat circuitous history and in this instance these delays turned out to have a good result. Ultimately, the added time and new information resulted in a more cost effective and viable proposal.

School officials began considering the future of the town’s elementary schools more than seven years ago. A design committee was appointed nearly three years ago. For much of the past several years, officials leaned toward having just two elementary schools, which could have meant administrative and maintenance efficiencies. The two-school plans would have returned one building to the town for alternative use or sale. These two-school proposals were built on a foundation showing the number of pupils in kindergarten through grade four declining into the foreseeable future, a reality nearly all Connecticut school districts now face.

Other realities, however, forced delays in moving early plans forward. A plan to close Lillie B. Haynes, for example, was scrapped in part because it was determined the building would have few viable alternative uses. In addition, the Board of Education balked at the $58 million project cost and its impact on taxpayers during a flagging economy.

By early 2016, officials instead considered a $34 million plan to renovate Lillie B. Haynes, close Niantic Center and delay renovation of Flanders.

Later that year, officials were presented with decidedly different enrollment projections than those from 2014, projections that turned out to be a game changer for the project. Within a decade, the town would need to find space for 130 more elementary pupils resulting from new housing construction and expected hiring at the region’s major employers.

Back at the proverbial drawing board, school officials decided the promise of more schoolchildren necessitated keeping all three schools. They also recognized, however, the reality of a still-struggling economy meant they had to be cost conscious.

The end result is a no-nonsense renovation plan that provides necessities such as upgraded technology capabilities, improved air exchange systems, secure entryways and handicapped accessibility, without the price tag that new construction or complying with the state’s “renovate as new” guidelines would mean. Because East Lyme would not be building new, or renovating as new, the state share of the project costs will be relatively low, about $5 million, but so too will be the overall cost of the construction, meaning savings for the town and state both.

East Lyme officials did their due diligence in developing this proposal. Enrollment projections show that all three buildings will be needed and a redistricting plan now in the works will even out the school populations.

Given the economies that could be realized with fewer buildings, it’s unfortunate a two-school option was deemed not viable, but if residents accept the current proposal at referendum, they will get three renovated elementary schools for less money than the earlier two-school proposals. Based on citizen feedback throughout the planning process, it appears the townspeople want to keep their neighborhood schools.

The March 14 referendum deserves support and East Lyme’s youngest schoolchildren deserve renovated schools.