PARIS — Lawyers for the towns of West Paris and Paris have laid out their findings in regards to the closure of Agnes Gray Elementary School in West Paris, stating that Maine School Administrative District 17 and Superintendent Heather Manchester violated state law by ordering it closed last February.

Select Boards from both towns unanimously voted to authorize a joint lawsuit against the school district for doing so.

Oxford Hills tax payers have been loathe to commit money to school building maintenance and repair for years. Agnes Gray’s condition was clearly a consequence of deferring much-needed maintenance. But SAD 17 has not moved to permanently close the school.

Monday, SAD 17’s school board of directors will take up repairing the 130-year-old school as an agenda item during its regular business meeting.

Last month the board’s operations committee opted to not recommend expending up to 6 million dollars to pay for long overdue maintenance like its deteriorating roof, unsafe regular and emergency exits and adding life safety upgrades.

But the entire school board will have the final say Oct. 21. The meeting will take place at Central Office on Main Street in South Paris and starts at 7 p.m.

Troy Ripley, chairman of the Maine School Administrative District 17 board of directors, at the school district’s Sept. 19 validation meeting for its 2024-25 operating budget. Nicole Carter/Advertiser Democrat

According to School Board Chairman Troy Ripley of Paris, if repairs are voted down, then the school district will be responsible to execute next steps of formally closing the school.

“If the full board says no, then we get to the law (aspects),” Ripley said last Friday after the West Paris-Paris joint selectmen’s meeting adjourned with a mandate to sue SAD 17. “Then the statutory requirement that the lawyers say are required kick in. Then it’s time to go to West Paris (voters) and ask, do they want to pay for it to be repaired?

“If voters don’t want to pay for it, then we go to step two, which is, what do they want to do with the building? There’s a whole process and you have to go through it step by step.”

Ripley explained that before a school board can take action on a situation like expending $6 million on building repairs, a lengthy series of steps is required.

“The allegation that nothing was done, as stated by these two lawyers [for West Paris and Paris], is untrue,” he said. “Since March, the process has been to find out how to fix things, which entails preparing requests for proposal and requests for bid. Any bids that come back then have to go engineering and to the fire marshal’s office for approval. That can take years to do.

“Two operations committee meetings ago, we got the numbers back, without it yet going to the fire marshal or engineering. The committee does not recommend we do it, but it will be a board vote.”

Ripley pointed out that during the evening many citizens stood to call out the district for not putting money in the building, but no one made amendments to specifically address Agnes Gray repairs during three validation forums where the most recent proposed budget was presented.

“One of the residents complaining about the state of Agnes Gray, had been chair of the school board’s operations committee for nine years,” he said. “That’s the committee taking care of buildings. Never during those nine years did he convey what he did tonight” about Agnes Gray.