CLINTON - First Selectman William Fritz is a devout baseball fan, so it's no surprise that he uses the phrase "home run" a lot when describing what's been going on lately with the planned $64.75 million new Morgan School. A jump in expected state reimbursement from 31 percent to almost 44 percent may explain the enthusiasm.

The way Fritz explained it, when it comes to state funding, officials tend to frown upon new construction, leaning more toward renovating existing structures. Subsequently, more state dollars are generally available for school districts that improve old schools instead of building new schools.

"So," the first selectman said, "we've hit a home run. The state heard our proposal, and our explanation, as to why building a new school would actually be cheaper and more efficient than rebuilding the old Morgan School, and [has] agreed to give us maximum dollars for the project.

"We were told [by state officials] that our presentation set the standard that other school districts would have a difficult time to live up to," said Fritz. "Our school people did an excellent job."

Specifically, according to Superintendent of Schools Jack Cross, the state has approved nearly a 44 percent reimbursement rate, or about $28 million, up from an anticipated $20 million for the new high school, which will replace the existing 60 year-old Morgan School.

Cross said the proposal Clinton school, town officials, and consultants prepared for the state to review actually showed that it would have cost $7 million more to renovate the old school than to simply build a new one.

Why?

"There were just too many code issues and energy efficiency issues with the old school," said Cross.

Clinton taxpayers can be proud of the work done by their local officials, Cross said.

"I'm just like anyone else," said Cross. "I don't like seeing my taxes going up, but we needed to do something with the high school and the result is that we will have a state-of-the-art high school and we did it at a cost of $35 to

$38 million to local taxpayers."

Fritz says bids on the new high school will likely be accepted later this year and "shovels should be in the ground" by early in 2014. The current hope is that the new school will be ready for the opening of school in September 2015.

Most of the school will be a two-story structure built into the grade of a hillside that falls away to a river and will appear from Route 81 as a one-story building.

At its southern end, the building will grow to three stories, with science, technology, engineering, and mathematics rooms on the ground floor and regular classrooms on the upper two floors.

The building's entryway will be built largely of glass and will allow views straight through the building to the fields and river behind it.

The design and contents of the building are expected to closely follow the original concept, a 135,000-square-foot structure that is significantly more energy efficient and suitable for education than the sprawling current school, according to officials.

The 35 acres, divided nearly in half by a river that roughly parallels Route 81, offers a unique advantage, according to the architects, in that it extends all the way to the Peters Recreational Complex and The Joel School.

It will have 32 classrooms, the gymnasium, a 650-seat auditorium, cafeteria, learning commons, the specialized instruction areas, and four new athletic fields, as well as tennis courts, according to the plans.