Norwich ― The $385 million school construction project can’t come soon enough for the staff at the school central offices in the former John Mason School at the Norwichtown Green.

For the third time this school year, central office staff members were forced to relocate to various school buildings, go to McDonald’s restaurant next door or the Samuel Huntington School down the road to use the bathroom. The sewer line beneath the basement and rear parking lot was clogged again, Superintendent Kristen Stringfellow said Friday afternoon.

The old sewer line beneath the parking lot becomes clogged with tree roots, Stringfellow said, and sometimes the building’s antiquated pipes become clogged with items flushed down the toilets. Luckily, Stringfellow said, the staff get enough warning when water starts bubbling up through the basement floor. Immediately, staff are told they cannot use the building’s bathrooms.

“McDonald’s has been a very good neighbor to us,” Stringfellow said of the restaurant directly across New London Turnpike from the central office building.

Maintenance staff first try to clear clogs with a plumbing snake, but if that doesn’t work, they must call a plumber. If the work will take more than an hour, the scramble begins, Stringfellow said. She calls various schools to see what office space might be available on short notice.

The school registration office, located in the basement level of central office, shuts down for the day, and most office secretaries are sent home, because the city’s cramped schools do not have the space to accommodate them, Stringfellow said.

Voters in November approved a $385 million school construction project that calls for building four new elementary schools to replace seven current elementary schools and moving central offices and adult education to the Huntington School. New schools on the grounds of the former Greeneville School and the grounds of the current John Moriarty and John B. Stanton schools are planned for the first phase of the project.

Next week, Stringfellow will write a letter to School Building Committee Chairman Mark Bettencourt to ask if central offices could move temporarily into one of the vacated school buildings once the first new school is completed.

Bettencourt said Friday the idea would require some research and could not be paid for using bonding money for the project, since a temporary move of central office was not in the concept plan. But vacated school buildings would still be in the control of the school system until they no longer are needed for education purposes, Bettencourt said.

The entire project is before the state legislature this spring for approval of state funding and the state reimbursement rate. State Sen. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague, is working to try to boost the city’s reimbursement rate from 67% to 80% for much of the project.

c.bessette@theday.com