By Lindsay Tice,Staff Writer

Thirteen schools will get state aid to redo their dilapidated buildings or build anew.

In the money: Pettingill Elementary School in Lewiston, Durham Elementary School and Hawthorne School in Brunswick.

Out of luck, for now: Mt. Blue High School in SAD 9, Lisbon High School and all 51 other hopefuls.

Schools apply for major construction money every two or three years. For this cycle, the Maine Department of Education ranked 66 old, overcrowded or run-down buildings. Officials first thought they’d have $130 million to distribute, but they ended up with millions more because other debts had been paid off.

The top-ranked schools – rated by the Board of Education on need – will share $200 million for their construction projects. Some schools will get an addition or a major overhaul, while others will be replaced with new buildings. The state will decide which.

Lewiston Superintendent Leon Levesque believes the state may want to replace Pettingill Elementary, a small school with basement classrooms and a closet-turned-teachers’-room. It serves more than 300 students and sits on about 2.5 acres, a site too small for a modern school.

“It’d be pretty hard for us to justify construction on that site,” Levesque said.

He was pleased, and not surprised, when Pettingill showed up near the top of the funding list. Like many other city schools, Pettingill is old, crowded and battling safety issues.

“We’re due some new schools,” Levesque said.

While Pettingill was all but assured funding with its high spot on the priority list, Durham Elementary School wasn’t. When the full list came out in March, the outdated, 400-student school was ranked No. 20. Durham officials appealed, saying enrollment projections were stronger than the state said.

The state agreed and Durham got bumped up to No. 11. The move made all the difference.

SAD 9’s Mt. Blue High School ranked No. 18 and its Mallett School ranked No. 20. Both were too far down the list to get money.

Superintendent Michael Cormier said the Farmington-area school system recently spent $6.5 million on its middle school and can’t afford to fix the other two schools on its own. Although SAD 9 has applied a number of times in the past, it will apply again.

“We’ll wait our turn,” he said.

State officials hope SAD 9 and others will get their turn sooner rather than later. Education Commissioner Susan Gendron will ask the state to increase the amount committed for school construction. She would like to get funding for a third of the schools on the list.

That could mean money for SAD 9 and SAD 75’s Mt. Ararat High School. But Auburn, which ranked No. 44 for Edward Little High School, would likely still be too far down the list.

Gendron plans to ask for the debt increase this winter, said Greg Scott, spokesman for the Maine Department of Education.

For now, the top 13 will create building committees, beginning the years-long process that includes public hearings, votes and state approval. The top six schools will try to get project approval from the state by the end of 2006. The other seven, which include Durham Elementary and Hawthorne, will go for project approval by the end of 2007.

Each school will get a different amount of money. Construction aid is calculated within General Purpose Aid, which is based on a complex formula that includes enrollment, tax rates and property values.