AUBURN – Residents will vote on the design for a new Lake Street Elementary School this week.

In a nonbinding straw vote to be held Thursday, residents will vote on a planned three-story, 40,000-square-foot building on Park Avenue. The design calls for 17 classrooms, separate music and art spaces and a “hands-on” room for science experiments and other projects. It also sets aside space for a library, gym, cafeteria, English as a Second Language program and a speech and language program.

Music, art and the “hands-on” room will be located on the basement level. Most offices, the library, gym and cafeteria will be located on the first floor. Classrooms will be housed four or five to a wing on the first and second floors.

Although the building will be three stories tall, architects have designed it to be built on the side of a hill, minimizing the ledge work and making the building appear only two stories from the back.

Auburn officials started looking to build a new school last fall after Education Commissioner Susan Gendron said the state would not help the city expand the current building as expected. The decision divided the community for months as residents argued whether the community would be better off fighting to expand its old school or moving forward with plans for new construction.

Voters overwhelmingly approved the new site in a nonbinding straw vote in February.

The current Lake Street Elementary School is set on less than 2 acres in the heart of an old neighborhood. With 145 students from kindergarten through Grade 3, the school has no room for art or music, and no cafeteria or gymnasium. Outdoor play areas and parking places are limited.

The new school would accommodate about 300 students from kindergarten to Grade 6, including some area students currently bused to Sherwood Heights School for its English as a Second Language program. The school will also take about 16 students who need speech and language help. That program is currently housed at Fairview Elementary School.

The straw vote will be held at 6 p.m. at Auburn Middle School.

At the same time, voters will discuss the possibility of building a 5,264-square-foot, middle-school-sized gym in the new school rather than a traditional 4,100-square-foot elementary gym. The bigger gym would give the community a new place to hold competitions and sports practices. Although the state is sharing in the cost of building a new Lake Street school, local taxpayers would have to pay for extras – including a bigger gym – themselves. Straw vote participants may discuss the gym but will not vote on it Thursday.

School officials hope to bring the design to the State Board of Education in July. If approved, they want to hold a public hearing on the new school early in September and hold a binding referendum on the entire project later that month.

More information about the project is available through the school system’s Web site, http://www.auburnschl.edu.

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