Just by driving up from North Avenue, you see a dark, lifeless school. Only in your head can you picture what Coleytown was like better days. Big blue ventilation pipes and a school surrounded by chain-link fencing is a little bit of a scary sight.

There are many reasons why mold closed down the school—wet building, its lack of a moisture barriers, an older building on a hill that allows trickling water to come in.

Mold has always been a problem and every summer the district cleaned the windows and floors, but they didn’t clean the parts of the building that they needed to clean, and after a long period of time the mold spread and created a bigger problem.

But what middle schoolers want to know is what is the latest news on the building.

The school is still on track for opening in the 2020-2021 school year. The final cost of the renovations are supposed to be around $30 million.

There will be new things added to the building. Currently, plans call for the exterior to look updated in a new, modern way. The main entrance will be new, the library is going to be updated as well as the science classrooms and the stairwells. The current plans and the budget will have the reopened school having many improvements.

However these plans might change because it’s difficult to know what old materials can be saved or what will have to be purchased.

Currently, there are still books and other materials in the classrooms. The materials are still at Coleytown because when the teachers came to Bedford they were told to bring only what they needed to teach because it was at the time thought that the move was only going to be a temporary thing.

Before students return to the building, the district is going to test everything—teaching materials, furniture, Smart boards—for mold to see if they are still usable.

The Board of Education is considering redistricting, and the plan is likely to come out soon. According to Coleytown Principal Kris Szabo, the Board is most likely to keep the districting in the elementary schools the same.

But the Board will probably split the districting for the middle schools because Coleytown will most likely get bigger.
This year the CMS committee is working hard so that next year students and teachers may return and blue ventilation tubes and chain link fencing become things of the past.