After eight decades, Pettingill Elementary School is showing its age.

Principal David Bartlett has wrung every square inch of space out of it: tutoring sessions meet in cluttered foyers, music instruction is nomadic, and even a basement closet has been converted into a one-on-one screening room.

Creativity has limits, though. Bartlett can’t put more electrical outlets into classrooms, many of which have as few as two. He can’t conjure more closet space for electronic equipment, or student supplies such as backpacks and boots.

He can’t install more bathrooms (one set for the 310 students, and one set for the 40 faculty). And he can’t move the office closer, or the student bathrooms away, from the front doors, even though both are glaring security liabilities.

Neither Bartlett, nor the Lewiston School Department, should continue patching the cracks in Pettingill School to make it a reasonable facsimile of what’s necessary to meet the demands, or requirements, of modern education.

A plan – eight years in the making – to replace Pettingill School is before voters in Lewiston on Feb. 27, and we strongly urge the community’s support for the project. Please vote yes on Questions 1 and 2, to approve funding for new school construction.

The plans for the new school make sense for city taxpayers. The state is committed to funding 96.5 percent of $21.1 million cost of the new school, which would be built on 24 acres about a mile from Pettingill on College Street.

Question 1 asks taxpayers to approve the school construction; the local share, coming straight from Lewiston taxes, would be $181,883. Question 2 asks voters to approve an additional local expenditure of $582,748 to construct an expanded gymnasium on the new site. The total local cost, if both questions pass, would be $782,631.

Approving the construction has ramifications beyond just replacing Pettingill. Lewiston Superintendent Leon Levesque said the new school will relieve both the Pettingill and Montello schools of overcrowding.

Montello has an enrollment of 890, but was built for 675. Levesque describes it as a “catch basin” that’s trapped the overflow from Pettingill and Longley. The new school is necessary to relieve this pressure, as predictions show Lewiston’s population – and student enrollment – will stay steady into the future.

Timing is another reason to support the new school. For eight years, the administration in Lewiston has labored through the state’s draconian review process for new school construction.

Putting off this project again would drop Pettingill back to the bottom of an almost endless list of Maine schools needing capital investment, and kick an administration that’s presented a thoughtful construction plan to the voters.

Pettingill has served this community well.

But its time has passed, and this construction is in the best interest of the community, and its students.