Officials preview a draft moving schedule that could keep students out of school for two weeks during the transition

Carrie Jones

Dec 02, 2025

The Bar Harbor Story is generously sponsored by Paradis Ace Hardware.

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BAR HARBOR—The geothermal credit that the Conners Emerson School is hoping for to help offset the costs the new school construction may be double what was expected, School Superintendent Mike Zboray told school committee members, December 1.

“That was the big news from last week,” Zboray said. “So, that was exciting.”

Zboray and Director of Maintenance Scott Watson met with the staff at Competitive Energy Service who are helping with the school’s tax credit for the new geothermal system.

As Zboray and Watson were working with Competitive Energy Service, they’d been initially expecting a $250k to $500k credit because of the size of the geothermal system, which they believed to be larger than 1 megawatt.

The federal government has requirements for projects of that size and what can be included in the credit.

However, due to redundancies and other factors, they learned some good news.

“Our system is below the 1 megawatt,” Zboray said.

That increases the tax credit amount to likely somewhere between $500k and $1 million.

School Committee Vice Chair Misha Mytar asked if there is a risk of the federal program changing and putting the credit in jeopardy.

“No, no, it’s good,” Zboray said. “We are continuing to work with CES (Competitive Energy Services) to make sure we have all the components.”

Any credit or reduction in cost would help with the cost of the approximately $58-million project that will construct a new school in Bar Harbor and replace the aging and deteriorating Conners Emerson schools. Voters overwhelmingly approved the bond to support that project, June 13, 2023.

The school construction project’s $2.475 million contingency fund was used approximately 30% of the way through the construction in July 2025. It was then over that contingency by $500,000. Since then Zboray and others have looked for ways to cut costs.

Two pieces really impacted the overall construction budget, Zboray has previously explained.

The first was a Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) delay for the project, which made the construction start later and required keeping the ground warm during the winter for foundation work required for the concrete, which increased costs.

The second big issue was that the value engineering process underestimated potential costs and overestimated cost-savings for pieces of the project. When those costs came in, they were more than the estimates.

According to Buildr, “Value engineering in construction is a systematic method for analyzing a project’s components, functions, and costs to identify cost-saving or value-enhancing opportunities.”

Steel tariffs also impacted the project despite the best efforts to get most of the steel into the country prior to those tariffs hitting.

When the geothermal system’s tax credit becomes real for the town is unsure. A hybrid system will power the new school for about a year because of construction and transition needs.

There have been no potential change orders that either add or chip away from the project’s cost this past month. Principal Dr. Heather Weir Webster and Zboray have found a savings of approximately $40k by looking at the signage and wayfinding pieces within the project and instead utilizing staff and students to make them.

The new school is still on track for an October completion.

The clerk of the works for the project is earning his keep, Zboray said, and recently found leaks in the sheetrock, which were since repaired.

As a reminder of the aging of the two current school buildings, they suffered three leaks since the last school committee meeting. They have been repaired, Dr. Weir Webster said.

Zboray also passed around a draft moving calendar, but only to the board members and not the public or press who were attending.

The potential calendar would be if the school received a waiver from the state that allows them to reduce the number of mandated school days by four. It would add staff-only days to meet contractural obligations.

“There’s going to be so many new things that are coming their way,” Dr. Weir Webster said of the teachers and staff and change. “It’s going to be super stressful for not only the students, but the staff as well. So, it’s going to be really important that we start off the school year on a positive note and making sure that we’re seeing this as a collaborative and exciting news rather than a stressful one.”

The new school is scheduled to be substantially complete on October 13.

“We are looking at two weeks of being out of school—two weeks of that move happening,” Zboray said. “There would be no school the last week of October.”

The week of November 2-6 there would be the teacher days to get the school back up and running. There would be no students in the building that week.

November 9 and 10 would likely be when the students return to the new building. They’ve also removed some early release days so that the weeks are less choppy. They are shifting the end date of the first semester by two weeks.

There are no snow days. The last student day is June 15. If they do not get the waiver, they will use the snow days.

“So this is our first—Well, actually, it’s not our first draft,” Zboray said.

“It’s like our eighth,” Dr. Weir Webster said.

“It’s our eighth draft of looking at the calendar and trying to sort it out and make it work,” he said.

School Committee Chair Marie Yarborough said she was cringing at the concept of virtual conferences as the only option for parents particularly at the elementary school level though she can see why they are doing that this year.

Mytar said she had the same concerns.

There was some discussion about the timing of the parent teacher conferences as well.

“We don’t want parents in the building when we’re first getting in there,” Dr. Weir Webster said of the moving process in connection with the conferences.

“It’s an exhausting week for the teachers,” Dr. Webster said of the parent-teacher conference week.

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