VINALHAVEN – Local officials announced Tuesday that MBNA New England, the credit card lender with several offices along the midcoast, will donate $1 million toward a new school. The money is specifically earmarked for the auditorium.

When the building is completed in September 2002, it will have been the largest public construction project ever undertaken on an island in Maine.

In addition to the corporate gift, the Cawley Family Foundation – headed by MBNA co-founder and president Charles Cawley – will donate $200,000 toward enhancements for the school’s library.

Most of the funding for the $12.5 million project will come from the state. The Maine Department of Education has rated the school board’s application for construction funds for a new building at No. 7 of 81 requests. The present K-12 Vinalhaven School was built as a temporary replacement for a school that burned in the 1970s, and school and town officials say it is woefully inadequate and in poor condition.

“It is in deplorable condition,” said Kris Young, who serves on the school’s building committee, at a press conference at the offices of the Island Institute in Rockland Tuesday morning. Young is also president of the Partners in Island Education group that is raising funds for the new school.

In addition to the MBNA gifts, $350,000 has been raised on the island, with another $450,000 to go.

School officials and the Island Institute hosted a tour of the school Tuesday afternoon to show reporters the conditions Young described. The school currently serves lunch in a hallway. Students take it back to their classrooms.

A small gymnasium is the only large room in the school, and it is also used for assemblies and special presentations such as plays.

Many of the classrooms are overcrowded, and with enrollment projected to grow from the current 204 students to 300 in five years, those conditions can only worsen, said Superintendent George Joseph.

Students had no shortage of reasons to give for the need for a new school.

Chelsea Webster, a fifth-grader, said the bathrooms were too small. “And we need a bigger room,” she said, referring to a crowded classroom, “and we need a bigger playground.”

Fifth-grader Brandon Osgood said the baseball team now plays on the soccer field. “We need our own baseball field,” he said.

Another fifth-grader, said “the ceiling leaks when it rains.”

Several of the students described how classrooms are often broiling hot or freezing cold in the winter, an observation also made by Joseph and Young.

“In the wintertime when the snow melts,” said eighth-grader Nick Barton, “some of the classes flood.”

One of those classes is Sandra Osgood’s kindergarten room. She points to an outside door through which rains from southeasters pour onto the floor.

Although she is reluctant to complain about the size of her room – it is one of the biggest in the school – Osgood said most of the classrooms are too small.

Osgood has taught at the school since 1979, and her children and now her grandchildren attend.

The music room is in a modular building not joined to the school. She has to hold the door open on cold winter days for students to run to the building, she said, as the fierce island winds blow.

Air quality in the building is poor, she continued, and the high school and elementary school wings must share space in the specialty areas.

Art supplies are stacked on carts in the hall, and special education is taught in a room not much bigger than a closet.

“The teachers’ room is a joke,” she said, not big enough for two teachers to use simultaneously to photocopy and laminate.

“We do without,” she said, summing up the plight of the school.

The new school, which is planned for land adjacent to the current school, will have a library that can be used by elementary and high school students, with two sizes of furniture to accommodate the range of ages. The Cawley Family Foundation grant will help pick up the extra costs.

At the press conference, Joseph said MBNA was a good example for other corporations.

Susan Lessard, Vinalhaven’s town manager, also praised the donation.

“Not too long ago, the idea of a new school on Vinalhaven was nothing but a dream,” she said at the press conference.

Joseph said building on an island has its challenges. Because of transportation problems, materials cost about 30 percent more. Some materials, such as gravel, can cost as much as 60 percent more than on the mainland.

Contractors have to pay employees for three hours extra to accommodate the ferry ride, he said.

Construction is expected to begin in May, and be completed by late summer 2002.