SAD 17 had been using a converted manufacturing building as an elementary school.

OXFORD – SAD 17 has done wonders to transform a steel manufacturing building into a temporary elementary school, Superintendent Mark Eastman told district directors Monday.

Now it’s time to move on.

Eastman took the board on a tour of the Madison Avenue Elementary School, home to the former Oxford Hills Technical School. Colorful banners and art lined the walls, and in one room stood a fearsome paper mache depiction of the school’s mascot, a purple dragon.

The district had six weeks to get the space ready to accommodate overcrowding at Hebron Elementary School and the Mildred Fox Elementary School in Paris. It opened about three years ago with 220 students in grades 4, 5 and 6.

Hebron reclaimed its 4th- through 6th-graders when a new elementary school was completed last year. The need for a new Paris elementary school was rated the third highest in the state in May 2002.

The state Department of Education recently approved the concept design for a new $12 million Paris elementary school, which will require 5 percent local funding from the eight district towns.

A public hearing has been set for 6:30 p.m. May 17 in the Forum at Oxford Hills Comprehensive High School to hear architect Richard Malm talk about the school floor plan, which is planned for land on High Street. District voters approved purchase of the site in 2003.

Eastman said the state wants to see a straw vote showing the public is in favor of the plans. The school will house up to 450 Paris students in pre-kindergarten through grade 6.

Getting concept design approval from the state was a huge challenge, Eastman said in a later interview. “I had to make nine trips back and forth to Augusta. There’s a lot more rule making, and they are very proscriptive than what we’ve seen in the past.”

In fact, today’s rules would have rejected the much-admired design of the new Hebron elementary school because new schools cannot be built for student populations of under 300, Eastman said.

Final state approval of the school design and budget is expected in June