OXFORD HILLS – Every town reporting late Tuesday night passed the school ballot issue allowing SAD 17 to use unrestricted funds to purchase land for the new Paris elementary school.

With seven of the eight towns in the district reporting, 5,715 approved the funding and 2,287 voted against it.

“It looks like a good, strong positive vote and I am very pleased,” Superintendent Mark Eastman said. “The building committee put a lot of work into this, and I’m gratified that their work has paid off.

“It’s an strong affirmation of the community school concept in our district,” he said.

The district will take the money from undesignated fund balances to pay for the property and then issue bonds or notes to replace the money.

Eastman explained that any interest incurred on the bond or notes would be included in the total project cost, of which 99 percent would be paid by the state.

The final construction cost of the school could reach $10 million.

The building of the elementary school in Paris will mark the first time since the district formed that each town would have its own elementary school.

Currently children in grades K-3 attend the Mildred M. Fox Elementary School in Paris and children in grades 4-6 attend the Madison Avenue School in Oxford.

The school site is 16.2 acres of land bordered in the front by High Street and on two sides by Hathaway Road and Meadow Lane. Railroad tracks border one portion of the lot.

Eastman also said the district will save the $198,000 yearly rental cost of the Madison Avenue School when the new school is done. He also projected savings in transportation and administrative costs, since there will be a need for one principal verses the two principals in place now.

Eastman said he hoped concept approval would be in January 2004 and funding approval would be in May to June.

He said he hoped the construction bidding would be able to be held in February of 2005 and occupancy in the fall of 2006.

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