By Timothy Churchill,Staff Writer

PARIS – The mood of all students tends to run high one day before the end of a school year.

But this year, Paris’ students in kindergarten through grade 6, who begin their summer vacation after school today, were especially giddy Tuesday afternoon during the groundbreaking for the town’s new elementary school.

The event off High Street was complete with music, speeches, a hovering helicopter to take an aerial photograph of the gathering and the release of two doves to symbolize the future coming-together of Paris’ elementary students.

Paris’ elementary students currently attend two schools: kindergarten to third-graders attend the Mildred Fox Elementary School on East Main Street in Paris; fourth-, fifth- and sixth-graders attend the Madison Avenue School on Route 26 in Oxford.

In their speeches Tuesday, several students described some of the future school’s benefits to the Paris community.

Fourth-grader Chelsea Dutil said the new school will allow “all the grades to join together so we can have fun.”

Fifth-grader Megan Keene said that older students will develop greater respect for younger students by sharing a building with them.

“I think it will teach kids at higher grade levels, like fifth and sixth, to be nicer to the other kids,” she said.

A few fantasies

Other students fantasized about what the new school ought to have.

“I would like to see a treehouse at our new school, because they are so cool,” said Jordan Cummings, who’s in kindergarten.

First-grader Mac Kim had a laundry list of desired items, including a movie theater “for rainy days,” bigger classrooms, a computer lab and an “elevator for people with diseases and handicaps.”

SAD Superintendent Mark Eastman said Tuesday’s ceremony marked the end of the first phase of a two-part process that’s been going on since 2002 when the town sought, and received, state approval to begin planning for the school. Two years ago, the school district received site approval; in 2004, it received concept approval; and, finally, this year, design and funding approval, Eastman said.

In September, voters in the eight towns of SAD 17 approved funding for their share of the school. And the Paris Planning Board gave the green light to the elementary school’s plans this March.

“I feel terribly, absolutely wonderful,” Eastman said. He added: “When you’ve been working on something for so long and the construction is actually going to begin, that’s what’s so exciting to me, how the vision has come to the point of reality.”

Ready in 2007

Eastman said construction of the school probably will be completed in two years.

“We’re feeling really confident about having it ready for the fall of 2007,” he said.

Eastman said the 62,000-square-foot new school on 16 acres off High Street between Hathaway Road and Meadow Lane will cost $12 million. Of that, 95 percent will be covered by the state, Eastman said, with the balance locally funded.

In comparison, the combined space in the Mildred Fox and Madison Avenue schools is about 45,000 square feet, he said.

The Mildred Fox school especially, Eastman said, is woefully inadequate for its students: The 1882 building has no cafeteria, gymnasium, or art or music rooms. The Madison Avenue school, he said, has no classrooms dedicated exclusively to science.

The new school, Eastman said, will have all those things.

In addition, the school will be “technology rich,” Eastman said.

“We really know that this is going to be an important part of a child’s education, using and understanding technology.”

The school building was designed by the architectural firm Lewis and Malm of Bucksport. It will accommodate 450 students, Eastman said. Lewis and Malm, Eastman said, won a national award last year for its design of the Hebron Station School; completed in September 2002, it is SAD 17’s most recent elementary school.

The general contractor for the Paris school is Payton Maine Corp., based in Saco.