The Cape Elizabeth School Building Committee is recommending the Town Council take $133,000 left over from the Pond Cove construction project and use it to help pay for additional work at the high school.

In November 2003, Cape voters approved a $1.5 million bond for the new kindergarten wing at the Pond Cove Elementary School, which came in 10 percent under budget, as well as a $7.9 million bond for the renovations at the high school, the first such work since its construction in 1969.

School Board Chairman Kevin Sweeney said he was delighted the building committee unanimously decided to make the recommendation and said he hoped the Town Council would look favorably on the request. He said he was not aware of any legal barriers to prevent directly transferring the funds from one project to the other.

Interim Superintendent Bob Lyman said if the Town Council approves the transfer there are about $339,000 worth of projects at the high school that are not currently funded. Those projects include redoing part of the driveway that wraps around the high school that was not initially going to be redone but has been “beat up” during the renovations, fencing around the new athletic field, and new ceiling and carpeting in the high school library.

The School Board, School Building Committee and the Town Council will tour the high school July 11, prior to a Town Council meeting at which the council is expected to receive the request to transfer the money.

The schools are also seeking state help to cover some of the cost of the work, but the request for a state school-construction grant has been rejected because the state Department of Education said work at Cape Elizabeth High School began before state approval was received, a claim Interim Superintendent Bob Lyman said is false.

Lyman is appealing the state’s rejection of his May application for $1.1 million from the Revolving Renovation Fund last month, to help pay for the $7.9 million renovation of the high school.

In his letter of appeal to the DOE, Lyman claims the high school project did receive state approval before work began, citing a Jan. 30, 2004, letter from the commissioner of education and an Aug. 23, 2004, letter of approval from Joseph Ostwald, the director of construction at the Bureau of Governmental Services.

“We clearly didn’t start construction before we had those approvals,” Lyman said. The contract for a construction manager was not finally agreed upon until Sept. 15, 2004, Lyman said, which means the total scope of the work was not even outlined until that time.

“We think we’re being held to a standard we were never made aware of,” School Board Chairman Kevin Sweeney said.

If the application were approved Cape Elizabeth would be eligible for a grant of 20 percent of the $1.1 million requested, which would mean a potential $260,000 in savings on interest payments. The remaining 80 percent would be offered in the form of an interest-free loan. Last year, the construction of a kindergarten wing at Pond Cove School received a $200,000 grant from the Revolving Renovation Fund that resulted in $375,000 in savings.

Lyman said three different projects were targeted within the current grant application: roof repair, handicap accessibility and the fire protection system. The application broke down as $970,000 for health, safety and compliance renovations and $194,000 for infrastructure. That money would be used to offset existing project spending.

In other school-funding matters, the School Board voted to use $30,300 from their 2005-2006 contingency fund to keep the Reading Recovery program at Pond Cove Elementary School intact at the present level. Last month the schools lost that amount in federal Title I funding, which supports the program. The lost funding is equal to about one person’s half-time salary.

Reading Recovery is a one-to-one reading and literacy program that works with struggling first graders.

“It is a critical, critical program,” Sweeney said.

There are currently three half-time Reading Recovery teachers who work in the first grade. The same three teachers also work as half-time literary specialists with all grades in Pond Cove Elementary School.

In a letter to the School Board, Interim Superintendent Bob Lyman strongly recommended the contingency fund be used for this purpose. Other options were discussed, including reducing every account in the budget a certain percentage to make up for the loss and using the $250,000 remainder from this year’s budget. But, Lyman said neither of these options was viable.

“There was no account left untouched,” Sweeney said. But, the budget is already so tight he said that they couldn’t find money in any other account without wrecking another program. The remainder can’t be used because by law whatever amount of money remains in the school budget reverts back to the town and can’t be used to cover a salary next year.

“This is the type of unanticipated cost that contingency funding is for;” Lyman wrote in his letter to the board. “We had no idea there would be this reduction when we presented the budget.”

“This clearly meets our definition of an emergency,” Sweeney said.

Lyman said concerns were raised that using about half the school’s $70,000 contingency fund so early may be a problem if there are other needs later.

Sweeney said it was unheard of to use the fund so early, though he also said he doesn’t remember using it at all in the eight years he has been on the School Board.

“We’ll just hope there are no other fiascos,” he said.

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