The fight for funding: officials push for Buckingham Elementary capital project amid funding issues

WORCESTER COUNTY.- Back in December, Buckingham Elementary School in Berlin was approved for new construction and to be redone from the ground up.

But as of October 5th, Worcester County officials were taken aback after they found out that the plan would be halted.

“We learned this past Thursday that the state would not be allocating any funding toward the construction of a new Buckingham Elementary school, which was a big surprise to the county commissioners,” President of the Worcester County Board of Commissioners, Chip Bertino, said.

Bertino said vacancies at adjacent schools- like Ocean City Elementary and Berlin Intermediate School- are to blame for the state pulling its funding.

“Because of capacity, they were not going to fund a new school for Buckingham, because there already was enough student capacity at other schools,” Bertino said.

Worcester County schools’ facility planner, Joe Price, said the state was giving both the school and the county the runaround, even after exhausting other state funding options, like the Sustainable Communities Program.

“In January [or] February, that’s when the adjacent schools issue came up,” Price said. “There was no state funding, and then the Sustainable Communities Program was brought up, so there was a mechanism for state funding, throughout the summer- until we got the letter in September saying no, officially, there is no state funding through any state program.”

And as the Board of Education goes through the appeals process to gain back the funding, Bertino is hopeful that both sectors will be able to work together to bring an essential school to the community.

“We are going to move forward,” Bertino said. “The Board of Education and the county government will work together to ensure that a new school is built for the Berlin community, and for the students at Buckingham elementary school.”