Ellsworth residents to vote on school site

ELLSWORTH – Residents will have one last chance next week to weigh in on the site for a new elementary school before the project goes before the State Board of Education.

A public meeting will be held at 7 p.m. Monday, March 12, at Ellsworth Middle School, followed by a nonbinding straw poll vote.

Voters will decide whether the proposed site for the kindergarten through fifth grade school, attached to the existing middle school off Forrest Avenue, is appropriate.

After evaluating about 15 potential sites last summer, the Ellsworth Building Committee settled on using the existing middle school and building a separate K-five building attached to the current structure.

That option would allow the project to include much-needed renovations to the middle school, something residents supported at a meeting in January that drew more than 100 people.

At that same hearing, however, residents expressed concerns about whether the building committee was trying to cram too much onto the 20-acre site. Increased traffic and safety questions arose as well.

Ellsworth Superintendent Frank Hackett said Friday that the site will be a snug fit, but everything he has heard so far has been positive.

If voters and the State Board of Education approve the site, design firm Oak Point Associates of Biddeford will shift attention to the building concept.

The current plan calls for a two-wing structure that would separate grades K-two and grades three-five. There would be one cafeteria for all pupils, but separate gymnasiums and libraries.

The new school would replace the General Bryant E. Moore School and the Dr. Charles C. Knowlton School, both located on State Street. Those properties would be turned over to the city.

Ellsworth is fourth on the state’s priority list of 11 schools that will receive project funding in 2008 and 2009.

The towns of Gouldsboro and Winter Harbor also are on the state’s list for a new school. Earlier this week, officials in those towns learned that taxpayers may have to shoulder a substantial cost of the school project, even though they were told it would be almost entirely state-funded.

Hackett said he doesn’t see that happening in Ellsworth.

“I don’t know enough about their situation, but we have not been told anything other than this is a 100 percent state-funded project,” he said.

Ellsworth residents will get another chance in May to approve the conceptual design for the school, which then will go back to the State Board of Education.

If all goes well, Ellsworth will vote officially on the project at a June referendum.