The $14.4 million school is the second costliest construction project in the state.

LISBON- Moveable walls. A science lab with tiered seating. An amphitheater.

All of this will be part of one of the most expensive construction projects in the region: Lisbon’s new elementary school.

According to Gerry Dennison, western Maine analyst for the Maine Department of Labor, the $14.4 million school is second only to the new $31 million hangar at Brunswick Naval Air Station.

In third, fourth and fifth place are the $10 million Hilton Garden Inn in Auburn, the $8 million Sunday River Golf Course and the new $7.6 million Auburn City Hall.

All are under construction or recently completed, Dennison said. The new Lisbon school is more than a third of the way done.

“I’m so excited about having the kids move into that new building,” said Union 30 Superintendent Shannon Welsh, who oversees schools in Lisbon and Durham.

Approved by the Maine Department of Education in 2000 and by Lisbon voters in 2002, the school was designed to replace Lisbon’s two aging elementary schools. Both were so crowded and in need of repair that the state determined years ago that it would cost less to build one large school than to fix the two smaller ones.

“The state has described the Marion T. Morse School as one of the worst in the state,” Welsh said.

The Marion T. Morse and Lisbon Elementary schools were built more than 50 years ago to accommodate 150 kids each. Morse now has 360 students in kindergarten through grade five, while Lisbon Elementary has 260.

The schools are so crowded that more than half of the kids have been forced into portable classrooms. There is little available space for art or music programs.

At Morse, Welsh said, “The art teacher was on a cart trying to go back and forth to the buildings.”

Both schools also have asbestos issues, leaky roofs and heating problems that make classrooms too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter.

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The new school will take care of all that.

Set on 26 acres on the edge of a wooded area in Lisbon Center, the three-story school will have room for 700 students – all of Lisbon’s students in kindergarten through grade six. Walls between classrooms will move so classes can collaborate. A large carpeted space in the hallway will be used for meetings.

Unlike most elementary schools, the new Lisbon school will have a science lab/discovery room with microscopes, an aquarium, plant space and tiered seating. It will have a media room with cameras, moveable benches and enough equipment for students to do their own cable access news show.

The library will have a sunken reading area with a view of the woods and the school’s natural amphitheater. The gymnasium will be the size of most middle school gyms.

Outside, the school will offer a field for softball and other sports, a paved area for ball games and three playgrounds, each one reserved for a different age group.

Officials hope eventually to construct a walking path from the building to a nearby river.

The new school, Welsh said, “is just going to open a number of doors for our kids.”

Committees will meet this fall to talk about a name for the new school and the future of Lisbon Elementary’s building. The Marion T. Morse building and its property will be turned over to the city, Welsh said.

The new school is expected to be completed next summer. Students are slated to start there in the fall of 2004.

The state will pay about $10 million of the $14.4 million bill. The town will pick up the rest.



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