PARIS — The chairman of the Maine School Administrative District 17 board of directors addressed selectmen recently regarding a petition being circulated to keep Agnes Gray Elementary School in West Paris open.

“The district answers to the department of education, state statute, or a judge, Troy Ripley of Paris advised selectmen at their meeting Nov. 12. The chairman of the school board said, “It doesn’t come the other way around. We have to work together and not against each other.”

The petition asks the school board to submit an application to the State Department of Education within a specified time for construction or renovation of a prekindergarten through sixth grade school in West Paris paid in whole or in part through state school construction funds.

Ripley said the school district started the process suggested by the petition in 2016, asking the State Department of Education to fund a construction project.

“We are on step six of a 21-step process that the (Department of Education) requires school districts to do,” he said. “I’m here because I think we can work together without banging heads every time we turn around.”

“It doesn’t seem like time well spent, a petition like that,” Ripley said by phone Tuesday.

The board of directors voted 19-1 last month against allocating up to $6 million in repairs to make the school safe.

The school at 170 Main St. was built in the late 1800s and was deemed by an engineering firm in February to be uninhabitable due to multiple safety failures: lack of adequate fire protection and functional emergency exits; outdated and poorly functioning plumbing and electrical systems; exterior degradation, including the roof that sheds decayed shingles during poor weather; exterior and interior stairwells that are not up to code; and boiler that is years beyond its serviceable life.

The school serves about 120 students in grades prekindergarten through six, some of whom now attend Paris Elementary School.

“I don’t understand how we have a dog in this fight with West Paris and Agnes Gray closing,” resident Janet Jamison said.

Town Manager Natalie Andrews explained that according to the town’s attorneys, Agnes Gray Elementary School in West Paris was closed illegally according to state statute.

Select Boards from Paris and West Paris unanimously voted to authorize a joint legal complaint against the school district for closing the school.

Ripley invited everyone to the district Building Committee meetings.

Town Clerk Elizabeth Knox asked Ripley why the district withdrew approval for the Paris Parks and Recreation Department to use a school for pickleball, calling it “retaliation.”

“That’s really what it seems like to us,” she said.

Ripley said by phone Tuesday that the issue was resolved with a phone call and that it involved a scheduling conflict with the district’s boosters, who get priority booking according to policy.

He suggested that the policy committee will look into the scheduling policy to make sure someone can’t be bumped off the schedule with short notice again.

The Select Board’s next meeting is set for 6 p.m. Monday at the Town Office.