PARIS — Following months of anticipation, Oxford Hills’ community-led Middle School Building Committee has proposed constructing a new Oxford Hills Middle School at its existing complex at 100 Pine St. in South Paris.

The all-volunteer committee announced the site Monday during a community forum at OHMS North Campus in South Paris.

“The committee looked at several locations but settled on its existing South Paris site based on its central location, access to services, suitableness, and cost,” Maine School Administrative District 17 Superintendent Heather Manchester told the Advertiser Democrat.

Organized in 2023 and comprised of area residents and educators, the Building Committee spent the last 18 months working through Maine’s statute-dictated process, necessary to maximize the amount of financial construction support allowable by the state.

The next step of the state-mandated process belongs to the community: residents will be asked for their project input in a non-binding straw poll.

The poll is scheduled for May 7 at 6 p.m. at the OHMS North Campus gymnasium.

A binding voter referendum will be held later this year in November.

OHMS was built back in 1954, expanded in 1976 and has not been able to accommodate its student population for years. Since 2013 about a third of its students have attended class at a rented facility in Oxford. Before occupying its South Campus 12 years ago, the district relied on portable classrooms for its outsized enrollment.

From the time the OHMS Building Committee first convened in August of 2023, its responsibilities have been to devise a setting that would shape educational opportunities in Oxford Hills for the next 50 years, according to Manchester.

Its work to date includes public and executive sessions; meetings with architects, engineers and the Maine Department of Education; assessments of current facilities and educational programming needs; gathering community and stakeholder feedback to establish program priorities; and the development and design of a building that will see attendance of 750 sixth through eighth grade students annually.

If the project is approved at referendum later this year, students will continue to attend the existing middle school campuses while the new facility is being constructed, as was the case in Auburn when a new Edward Little High School was built between 2021-2023.

A fact sheet for the new school was distributed during Monday night’s forum and is available on the School Construction Projects section of MSAD17.org.

It is estimated a new OHMS will cost about $80 million. Along with a new Oxford Hills elementary school also in planning stages, it is likely one of the last construction projects eligible for Maine Department of Education funding.