LEWISTON — The Lewiston School Department will file applications with the state Tuesday to build not one, but three school buildings.

The three schools on the wish-list to be replaced are the Lewiston Middle School on Central Avenue, the Martel Elementary School on Lisbon Street, and the inner-city Longley Elementary School on Birch Street.

The Lewiston School Committee voted unanimously Monday night to submit the three applications to the Maine Department of Education.

There are serious physical problems with all three buildings, said Jeff Larimer of Harriman Associates, an Auburn architecture firm.

The Lewiston Middle School was originally built as a high school in the 1930s.

“It does not meet the standards of a new middle school,” Larimer said. The design of the building either doesn’t allow, or challenges, contemporary teaching and class scheduling. “You can’t do block scheduling because of the configuration.”

The age of the building means there are heating problems and it lacks handicap accessibility. The building needs a lot of work, Larimer said.

“Additionally it’s on a very small site. The fields are maintained by the city Parks and Recreation. You’ve got a lot of limitations, restrictions, on an old building that’s becoming more and more difficult to maintain.”

A new middle school would allow for a three-grade school, instead of just the seventh and eighth grades. Including the sixth grade would relieve overcrowding at the elementary schools, he said.

Martel was also built in the 1930s, and has some similar limitations.

And one of Martel’s biggest problems is the location. “It’s a heavily commercial area. It’s not considered a safe site for students,” Larimer said. “All students are bused because of unsafe conditions and heavy traffic. Shaw’s development encroaches on back of the property. There’s no place to go.”

Martel has security problems, is not handicapped accessible, has classes in tiny rooms in the basement and a library the size of a classroom. “They do manage to do quite a bit in that school considering the limitations they have,” Larimer said.

The Longley Elementary School was built in the 1970s as an open-design, inner-city school in a public, multipurpose building. The school is on one side, the public building on the other.

“It has a very tight site with no parking,” Larimer said. The school lacks security. To get to the gym students have to walk through the public facility side.” Overcrowding means the school has four portable classrooms outside the school.

Originally built as an open concept teaching school, a theory that has been abandoned, “it’s been closed in so it has a lot of deficiencies.” The original design doesn’t work well with today’s teaching, Larimer said.

The three school buildings will have to compete with other new school requests from around the state.

There were no cost estimates for three school construction projects. Superintendent Leon Levesque explained that school departments first put in requests for major construction. After the state determines which projects end up high on the list, local officials meet with state officials to determine whether a new school or major renovation should happen, and what kind of project would best serve students in that community.

The last time the state accepted applications for new school buildings was six years ago. At that time, Martel and the middle school scored relatively high, or 24 and 37 with the first 20 schools receiving state funding. Longley is a new application. Typically that could mean Longley may not do well in this round, but all the publicity about problems at the school could help it secure funding, Larimer said.

The Department of Education is expected to announce which projects won state funding a year from now. If any of the Lewiston schools are approved, they would likely open in the year 2014, officials said.