Plans call for expanding the nearly 2-acre school lot

to five acres.
By Scott Taylor
Staff Writer

AUBURN – Voters will have to wait until this winter to vote on expansion plans for Lake Street school.

The school department has agreements to purchase about half of the land necessary to make the school expansion happen, according to school department Business Manager Jude Cyr. The department had hoped the state Board of Education would let the vote go ahead this November.

“They said they’d rather wait until we had all of the option agreements signed,” Cyr said. “Until we have those, they’d rather wait to move forward.”

Cyr met with the Auburn City Council Monday to brief them on efforts to expand the school. Councilors are scheduled to meet with the Auburn School Committee on Aug. 18. Plans call for expanding the nearly two-acre school lot to five acres, and that means purchasing up to eight neighboring properties to fill out the lot.

The 77-year-old Lake Street School has no cafeteria. Children eat in basement classrooms. It has no gymnasium, so students are bused to Webster Intermediate School once a week for physical education. There are no rooms for art or music.

The proposed expansion would fix all of that by adding 12 classrooms, art and music space, a gymnasium and a cafeteria. It would also create separate areas for buses and parents to drop off students, and for children who walk to school to enter school grounds.

Cyr said four neighbors have signed option agreements to sell their property to the school district if voters approve of the plan. A fifth neighbor wants to sell to the district now and Cyr said he is negotiating with three other neighbors.

“We have missed our window of opportunity to get it on the November ballot,” Cyr said. “It should be very early winter before we are ready now.”

staylor@sunjournal.com

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