BRIDGEPORT — Officials here are bullish about securing funding in the current General Assembly session in Hartford for a new, $132 million East End elementary school. “We feel confident we’ll get that authorization this year,” said Constance Vickers, a deputy chief administrative officer with Mayor Joe Ganim’s administration who is also liaison with state lawmakers. It cannot come soon enough given the property where the new building would go is occupied by the abandoned Harding High School, which earlier this month caught fire for at least the third time since September. Staff and students left the 1920s-era Harding in 2018 for a state-of-the-art campus a short drive away. The discovery five years later that Harding was never properly emptied out and secured resulted in a dispute between education and municipal officials over who was responsible for what. The city had initially sought to sell the shuttered school, but a possible deal with neighboring Bridgeport Hospital fell through, at which point the decision was made to reuse the real estate for educational purposes. The new East End facility would serve students who currently attend Beardsley, Edison and Hall, three decades-old neighborhood schools that are in disrepair. The aim is to get Connecticut lawmakers to reimburse the estimated $132 million price tag at a higher than usual rate of 95%.
Bridgeport plans new $132M school at abandoned Harding High site
