GUILDERLAND — The board of education here continues to weigh the future of the cobblestone schoolhouse in Guilderland Center, including looking into applying for “quiet title,” so that the district could, at some point, sell or donate the property. Meanwhile, the district is proposing using $30,000 next year to repair the floor, to prevent deterioration.

The deed included a reversion clause, which states that if the district ever became unable to use the building, the schoolhouse would return to the heirs.

Applying for quiet title, said the district’s attorney, Jeffrey Honeywell, requires going to court and being directed by a judge to publish in specific newspapers a notice of intention to assert title over a property, requesting any heirs or anyone with an interest in the property to come forward.

The applicant then waits the required period — usually at least three months, Honeywell said. If no one comes forward, the court will typically enter an order of “quieting title,” stating that the applicant is the clear owner, without any restrictions, Honeywell said. If someone does come forward, “They look into it,” he said.

“We have not been able to find any heirs,” said the district’s superintendent, Marie Wiles, “and we cannot sell it because we do not have title.”

The district’s superintendent of building and grounds, Clifford Nooney, is requesting $30,000 in the 2017-18 budget for repairs to the floor, meant to forestall any further deterioration.

The district had, in the past, considered the idea of restoring the building, in order to be able to show students what the school day was like for children who attended a one-room schoolhouse, said Neil Sanders, assistant superintendent for business. But if it did, “We would be in the position of restoring a historic structure, and the conversation we’ve had so far is that our mission is to educate students, not restore historic buildings,” he said.

District officials feel that there might well be an organization better suited to restoring historic structures, Sanders said; donating the property to that kind of organization is another option. If someone were to restore it, there would be nothing to preclude the school district from sending children on field trips to see it, he said.

The schoolhouse was built in 1860; the land it sits on was deeded to the school district in 1840 for the sole purpose of erecting a schoolhouse, Sanders said, by its original owner, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s co-founder, Stephen Van Rensselaer.

The building is one of only several cobblestone buildings in the county, according to a town building-structure inventory form submitted in 1979 to the state parks and recreation department’s division for historic preservation.

It described the building this way: “It is the best preserved cobblestone building in Guilderland. Exceptionally well executed in a traditional nineteenth-century construction technique indigenous to the northeast but rare in this vicinity, it is a significant historical and architectural resource of the community.”

Mary Ellen Johnson, vice president of the Guilderland Historical Society, said she sat on a committee, “oh, probably 20 years ago,” that looked into the possibility of using the cobblestone schoolhouse as a teaching tool to show local children what primary-school education was like more than 100 years ago. But the committee found, she said, that there was asbestos in it, that it was not handicapped-accessible, and that there was only one door, in the front, and that all those factors made it impractical to restore.

She said that, as she recalled, the committee had been told that the cost of improving it would be $10,000, back then, although she wasn’t sure if that figure had included just the asbestos remediation or resolving all of the issues.

The cobblestone building materials meant that “you couldn’t just cut a door in the back,” Johnson said.

There is no indoor plumbing or water, Johnson said. There is a separate small privy building behind the schoolhouse.

As a taxpayer, she realized that it’s a burden on the school district, she said, “to have this building that’s not usable for much of anything.”

Johnson sympathizes with the school district, but said she also feels that “it would be a shame to see someone buy that and demolish it.”

The cobblestone architecture was, she said, “something that was across New York State; this was about as far east as it went.”

Johnson said that she thought she recalled someone coming forward, 15 or 20 years ago, claiming to be an heir.

Sanders said that that person turned out to be an heir to, not the property owned by the school district, but a parcel next door.

In addition to the costs of repairing and restoring, the building would also need some remediation, specifically of lead, said Sanders. He said, in response to a question about asbestos, “I am not sure if the building has asbestos or not. I know lead was identified. I believe the paint may have been tested, and lead was in the paint.”

Members of Guilderland’s school board recently released their lists of priorities for the 2017-18 budget. Two of the members — Catherine Barber and Allan Simpson — said that restoring the cobblestone schoolhouse was a priority.

Barber went over in December and peeked in — literally, through a window — after a holiday open house at the Frederick-Mynderse House, which is “a couple of doors down,” said Barber. The schoolhouse was frozen in time: there were the old-fashioned school desks and even maps on the wall as well as a pot-bellied stove, she said.

The school district has since removed many of those old objects and put them into storage, she said, because of fears of the building’s deterioration.

Nooney is asking, said Wiles at a recent board of education meeting, for $30,000 in the upcoming budget, to repair — but not restore — the building’s flooring.

Barber said that the floor was, when she looked in, “kind of collapsing.”

The board and the district are “the custodians of this historic structure, and we shouldn’t be letting it fall apart,” Barber said.

Sanders told The Enterprise that there are several parts of the building in need of repair: the floor, the support structures under the floor, and the fascias, or boards just under the edges of the roof. He said that the roof was repaired about 20 years ago, but that the fascias did not seem to have been replaced at that time. The replaced roof is a historically accurate cedar-shake roof.

Blaise Salerno, who was superintendent of Guilderland schools from 1993 to 2000, had, during his tenure, looked into the possibility of restoring and using the schoolhouse for field trips. He said this week, “If you recall, when I was there, it was a difficult time for the district financially. But it was a lovely, lovely building.”

Salerno started a committee to look into possible uses of the building and grants to restore it. He said he had thought the structure could be used as a meeting center and also be “recreated, so students could come in and see what schools were like, back in the day.”

Salerno, who retired in 2011 as superintendent of Winchester schools in Winstead, Connecticut, said of the cobblestone schoolhouse, “We had a couple of meetings out there, to walk around and try to end up getting some kind of funding going, because we were afraid that it was going to end up just, over the years, without any care and becoming a derelict building that would probably end up having to be removed.”

He said he thought there was enough interest generated to “at least provide some care for the building, so that at a later date it could be redone and made into a learning situation.”

Salerno said he had spoken to people in town, years ago, who said that they had old books and other objects that they would be happy to donate, to help transform the schoolhouse into what it was like when it was actually used.

“One thing that’s really sad about our focus on the future is that we forget our past,” said Salerno. “I really think that that building, and the whole concept of Guilderland Center — back then it was a town and a thriving little community — to me that has real value, to be preserved.”