LEWISTON — It was a slow Tuesday morning for breakfast at the Longley Elementary School cafeteria. Only 200 students showed up for eggs or cereal.

“There have been some days where kids are standing with their trays, waiting for a spot” at a table, Principal Linda St. Andre said.

Longley, which takes up half of the Multi-Purpose Center building, was built for 200 students.

Today, it houses 344, and the number is growing.

“Next year, I have to add a second grade,” St. Andre said, adding that she didn’t know where that class would go. “I don’t have a room available.”

Changes are being considered for the Multi-Purpose Center, which comprises Longley Elementary at one end and city-run senior-citizen programs at the other.

Because more room is needed for students, Superintendent Bill Webster has asked the city to give the building to the School Department. Lewiston schools have run out of space and enrollment is projected to grow by 100 students a year, from 5,109 to 6,102 in 10 years.

Taking over the Multi-Purpose Center would give Longley more room and allow Webster to create a new prekindergarten center to house most or all of the city’s preschool students. That would free up room at other schools, Webster said.

The Lewiston City Council is considering buying the Knights of Columbus Hall on East Avenue and using it as a home for senior-citizen programs. Councilors are expected to discuss that on Dec. 20.

A lack of room at Longley means more than a crowded cafeteria.

Nearly half of the students are in portable classrooms. Seven portables parked outside the school hold grades four, five and six.

And compared to other schools in this post-Columbine era, Longley is less secure.

Because half of the building is run by the city, it is open to the public.

Doors in the cafeteria leading to the Multi-Purpose side are locked. But offices for school staff, including guidance, are on the other side of the locked doors. So is the gymnasium.

Last year a man who appeared to be impaired by drugs or alcohol was at the cafeteria door, knocking. The cafeteria was full of students.

“No one let him in, but all you’d need is one student innocently thinking, ‘Oh, someone needs to come in’,” and opening the door, St. Andre said. She tried to shoo the man away, but he persisted.

She went out to talk to him. He made no sense. “He really didn’t know where he was,” St. Andre said. “I called the police.”

St. Andre said she doesn’t come to school feeling afraid, but she worries about who’s going to wonder in. “I can see potential.”

Webster said he wants security at Longley “to mirror what we have in the other schools.”

It would cost about $750,000 to renovate the building into a school and convert the heat to natural gas. “Longley is the only school where we haven’t gone through that process,” Webster said.

If the council decides to give the building to the School Department, Webster said he’d try to use student carpenters from the Lewiston Regional Technical Center to renovate, if there’s time. Otherwise, he would seek outside contractors.

Webster  looked at the closed St. Joseph’s Catholic school on Main Street and the closed Pettingill Elementary School as possible pre-K sites. St. Joseph’s is being converted to housing. Mold and asbestos problems at Pettingill make that building too expensive to renovate.

“You’re talking $1 to $2 million before you walk through the door,” Webster said. The sooner the city tears down that building, the better, he said.

[email protected]