The Haldane Capital Project will break ground on June 16, 2026. By the start of the 2026-2027 school year, the eastern stairwell of the High School will be gone, dismantled under the oversight of The Palombo Group, the Newburgh and Poughkeepsie-based construction group that specializes in Capital Projects and is the main contractor of the development.
The construction was approved on November 19, 2024 by members of the Haldane community. According to High School Principal Julia Sniffen, it will bring some much-needed changes to the high school. The changes include a new student center, security vestibule, STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) innovation lab, woodshop, art classroom, and student support center.
The first phase of the project, which is set to finish in December of 2027, includes all of the aforementioned infrastructure changes and will leave a large portion of the eastern hill and wing of the high school inaccessible to students. “If you’ve ever lived through a construction project at your house, you know, redoing kitchens or bedrooms or bathrooms, you kind of have to pivot a little bit in terms of what it is that you do,” Sniffen said, referring to the impact of the construction on students and staff. While construction is ongoing, students and staff will have to deal with the loss of lockers, different paths to the Mabel Merritt building, and altered driving patterns to accommodate the construction ; however, the classrooms on the eastern side of the building will not be affected directly.
Sniffen said that during the school year, construction will mostly be contained to a time period from around 3 p.m. to the noise ordinance of 9 p.m. During the school day, construction must be kept under 60 decibels according to section 155.5 of the rules and regulations of the New York State Education Department. “As a community, we have to make sure that we’re on top of the construction. We’re paying attention to what’s going on. We’re making sure things are getting done the way we would expect them to get done. And that’s going to take oversight,” Sniffen said.
Once the dust settles and the project is complete, the Mabel Merritt Building will be eliminated as an instructional space. The new classrooms created will be used by the teachers who currently teach classes in the Mabel Merritt Building.
French teacher Amy Hopkin, who teaches on the first floor of the Mabel Merritt Building, appreciates how the Mabel Merritt can be “a little calmer than the hustle and bustle of the main high school,” but she feels it can also be too disconnected. The Mabel Merritt’s out-of-the-way location can sometimes lead to miscommunication between the main building and the instructors who teach outside of it. “A lot of communication happens face to face, and being in the Mabel Merritt, I’m not always in the know,” Hopkin said. Another problem she referenced was the support pillars that stand in the middle of most classrooms in the Mabel Merritt, blocking students’ view during class times.
The problems with the Mabel Merritt building go beyond communication and columns. According to Sniffen, handicap accessibility is an issue for classrooms on the second floor of the building. “We have students on crutches…[and] in all kinds of situations that prevent them from being able to go to class, so that clearly is a concern,” Sniffen said.
One such student is junior Griffin Lucca, who, following an injury that damaged his meniscus, was confined to the use of crutches for mobility while he recovered. Because the second floor of the Mabel Merritt Building is only accessible through a narrow stairwell, injured students like Lucca cannot make it to the Spanish classrooms in that part of the school. As a result, Lucca had to attend class virtually while sitting in the hallways of the Main building. “[Virtual Spanish] definitely made it more difficult as I was forced to try and focus while being in the hallway or the loud office making it hard to pay attention, I also wasn’t able to complete certain assignments, like quizzes for example, during class so I had more work to catch up on, and I also missed out on being able to ask friends for help or easily get help on specific questions,” said Lucca.
Problems like Lucca’s will be helped by the project’s completion. For Principal Sniffen, the goal is to ensure that happens according to plan. “It matters to me a lot that it’s done right. And it’s done the way we intended to be done,” Sniffen said.
