PARIS – Oxford Hills Christian Academy has a new home in the former Mildred M. Fox School in Market Square.

“Finally. A dream come true,” said Nancy Hanson of Paris, administrator for the school that educates 50 students in buildings in Paris and Oxford.

The negotiations have been ongoing this summer after the Fox ReUse Committee unanimously voted in late July to let Superintendent Mark Eastman negotiate a deal with the school and several other potential tenants. The goal was to eliminate the estimated $21,000 annual district cost in maintaining the East Main Street building.

Others interested in the space are Dr. Ken Hamilton, director of the HOPE center, which recently lost its building on High Street in Paris, and NPC-TV, which is looking for space to house a studio. There is enough space in the two-story brick building for all three organizations should they be interested and negotiations are successful, officials said.

Hanson said the academy has been given a one-year lease renewable for up to three years.

SAD 17 employees have been cleaning the space to allow the Christian Academy staff and students to get into the building Friday to finish cleaning and move in Saturday.

Hanson said grades four to 12 will occupy the second floor; grades kindergarten to three and offices will be downstairs.

Classes will begin Wednesday, Sept. 3, for all Oxford Hills Christian Academy students, she said.

Although teachers have been aware of negotiations for weeks, a letter to parents was sent recently to advise them of the change.

Hanson said she and the staff are excited about the move because it brings all grades under one roof and onto one campus and provides larger classrooms and more visibility in the community.

Hanson said students are equally excited about the move.

“It’s a good thing for us to do,” agreed 11th-grade student Tony Stevens of Sumner as he helped his former sixth-grade teacher Myrna Henry of Norway clean her classroom Friday morning.

The academy was formed as an independent school in 2001 when Paris Christian Academy, then part of the South Paris Baptist Church on Route 26, and Hosanna New Testament Church’s Christian school on Schoolhouse Road in Oxford merged, Hanson said.

The academy is funded by tuition and donations, and receives no state or federal money.

“The churches are still very supportive of us financially and in prayer. But it’s not a church-run school. It’s independent,” she said.

The Fox school closed in 2007 when students from there and Madison Avenue school in Oxford began attending classes at the new Paris Elementary School on High Street. That marked the first time all kindergarten through sixth-grade students from Paris were educated under the same roof since SAD 17 formed about 40 years ago.

The Fox school has most recently been occupied by offices, storage and a library. They’ll relocate to the Rowe School annex and Oxford elementary, Eastman said.

Paris expressed interest in taking over the building, but under state law the school district doesn’t have to give it to the town until school officials determine that there is no need to retain it.

Reuse committee members say they believe it may be several years before issues are resolved and a final decision on the building use can be made.