LEWISTON — After meeting with the City Council on Tuesday, schools Superintendent Bill Webster said there’s still no decision where an elementary school would be built.

There are three sites under consideration and a decision will be announced next month or later, he said Wednesday.

“We went into executive session and presented the progress of the site selection to the council,” he said. “We’ll take that back to the Site Selection Committee.”

That committee has yet to endorse a final site, Webster said. One site has more interest, but there’s further work to do to make that location work, he said.

“We still have some major details to work out, but we got good direction in terms of the next step,” he said. If that site doesn’t work, the focus would move to a different site.

The three sites are not being made public because it could hurt negotiations with landowners.

The school will house Longley and Martel Elementary schools’ students and relieve overcrowding at other schools. Longley and Martel are overcrowded, old and lack amenities that other schools have.

The new school is expected to hold between 800 and 900 students, and would open in the fall of 2019.

The new school is supposed to be built downtown in the neighborhood of Martel school on Lisbon Street or Longley school on Birch Street.

State regulations call for a 900-student school to have 29 acres. Typically, an elementary school of that size would cost about $40 million.

Because Lewiston has won state funding for construction, local property taxpayers would pay about 5 percent of the cost and the state would pay 95 percent.

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