Groton — A group of about 30 teachers, school staff and parents convened for the first Groton 2020 Advisory Committee meeting on Wednesday afternoon, to discuss what they feel will and won't work well for the middle school being constructed.

School officials will be meeting with SLAM, the architect, on Thursday afternoon to finalize the pre-design stage, which Superintendent Michael Graner described as "laying out all the instructional space and all the administrative areas we need in the school."

This stage has involved aligning the educational specifications, approved four years ago, to the allowable space for the school.

The superintendent said he had visions of farming out pre-design discussions to community members over the course of a couple months, but the architect gave the district eight days.

Graner added that prolonging parts of the project will make costs go up.

A new middle school, which will consolidate West Side and Cutler middle schools, is slated to open next to Fitch High School in the fall of 2020.

The timeline from SLAM includes schematic design from January through March, design development from March to June, local and state approvals from March to August, construction documentation from July through September, construction bid and award at the beginning of 2019, and construction from February 2019 to August 2020.

The maximum exterior size for the new school is 154,000 square feet. The project cost is $184 million, with $100 million reimbursement from the state.

Reimbursement is done by square footage per child, Graner said, and the highest enrollment projected for the new middle school is 947 students.

The district has been tasked with cutting the square footage of its plans, per a requirement from the Department of Administrative Services, Graner said. The deadline for 8,000 square feet of cuts is Thursday afternoon, and so far this has involved decisions like reducing the size of science rooms and reducing two health rooms, so that health will be taught in a science room or a general classroom.

Plans for a 150-seat black box theater in the middle school generated a lot of discussion at the meeting on Wednesday.

Graner said he thinks it would be foolish for middle school students not to utilize the 1,000-seat auditorium that will be just 300 yards away at the high school, but he acknowledged that scheduling use of the auditorium can be difficult.

West Side and Fitch parent Portia Bordelon questioned the ability to move equipment back and forth on the night of a performance and said, "Parents want to be involved in their school. They don't want to go back and forth. I don't care how close it is."

Charles Barnum Assistant Principal Christina Post noted that students at Northeast Academy Elementary use the high school auditorium, and while there's planning involved, it's manageable.

But she added of the black box theater, "I would really hate to see us not utilize something that we already have built and potentially not use something because of a communication" issue on who is where and when.

The plans for the new middle school also include a makerspace/engineering lab, design lab, graphic arts lab, media studio, editing bays and a "movement studio," which could be for physical education or dance.

These elements tie into the two middle schools' upcoming respective conversions into an arts magnet school and a STEM — science, technology, engineering and math — magnet school.

e.moser@theday.com