Ledyard - Major changes could be coming to the town's school system if residents vote in favor of a $65.8 million project at a referendum later this month.

The school renovation proposal - approved by the Town Council and up for a vote on Jan. 20 - would update aging facilities with significant state reimbursement, leaving the town to cover only some $24 million of the project's total cost. But the upgrades, said Superintendent Cathy Patterson, will also improve education for the affected students.

The proposal calls for the demolition of Ledyard Center School, which would become a grassy field. Students attending LCS would be redistricted, with many of them attending a renovated Gallup Hill Elementary School. Ledyard Middle School would also be extensively renovated.

Gallup Hill might be renamed, Patterson said. For now, she and other officials are referring to the proposed elementary school - a curved building with lots of glass and natural light - as "New Consolidated School East."

Combining the elementary schools, Patterson said, will allow the district to balance class size and save an estimated $200,000 in staffing costs. One elementary school principal will become an assistant principal, and teachers, nurses and paraprofessionals may be eliminated depending on enrollment numbers.

The renovations will also allow for improvements like a larger gymnasium, closets for art classrooms and more technology in the library.

The proposal also includes the renovation of Ledyard Middle School, which currently includes the seventh and eighth grades. The construction project would provide the space to move sixth-graders into the middle school, as is the case in many other districts, Patterson said.

She said that change would allow sixth-grade classes to have teachers dedicated to a single subject, take more electives and get more career guidance. They will also be able to benefit from the engineering classes that will be coming to LMS next school year.

The renovation would allow the district to address the open-space floor plan that was popular when Ledyard Middle School was built. The school currently has few walls, resulting in difficulty separating instruction spaces, upgrading electrical systems and implementing lockdown procedure.

The district also expects the updates to improve the students' morale: Assistant Superintendent Jennifer Byars has prepared a list of studies published by organizations such as the Journal of Education Finance and the Department of Education that report building conditions affect students' persistence, involvement and achievement scores.

If the project is approved, said a hopeful Patterson, construction should begin in 2016, and the New Consolidated School and the renovated Ledyard Middle School are expected to open by September 2019.

Students would be able to continue classes with minimal interruption during the construction, said Director of Buildings and Grounds Sam Kilpatrick. He said the school additions will be built first, and then the district will "swing" students into the additions while the rest of the building is renovated.

There will be a special town meeting on Jan. 12 to discuss the proposal, which, Patterson said, is being voted on before the regular May referendum to allow time for the district to apply for approval by the state's June 30 deadline. Failure to get that approval would mean the project would have to be delayed another year.

When residents show up to vote on Jan. 20, they'll see a single question encompassing all the upgrades rather than separate questions for each school project. They'll also see what Patterson calls the "big numbers" - the price of the project before an expected state reimbursement of 62.5 percent.

The actual amount that Ledyard will pay is $24 million, Patterson said. The district would be taking advantage of the state's "renovate as new" construction category, which provides the high reimbursement rate if the project meets certain criteria.

k.catalfamo@theday.com

Twitter: @kccatalfamo