HOLLIS – Hollis voters this month will decide whether to save a brick monument, the former Hollis High School, now no longer needed.

“If it doesn’t pass, it’s gone,” Meg Gardner, one of three women leading a drive to save the school, said last week. “We only have one chance.”

If voters reject the proposal, the building likely would be leveled.

Article 19 on the town’s ballot with voting on Tuesday, June 14, asks voters to receive back the old school on River Road (Route 35). Polls will be open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. at the fire station on Plains Road in Hollis.

The Hollis Board of Selectmen – Irving “Ben” Severance, David McCubrey and Don Marean – oppose accepting the former Hollis High School. “We just think it’s not a good investment for the town,” Marean said last week.

Also on Tuesday, June 14, Buxton voters will determine the fate of its former high school, known as the Hanson School, on Route 22 in Buxton Center. On Article 5, Buxton would lease the former Buxton school from the district for one year at a $1.

Hollis voters are also being asked as part of the proposal to appropriate $64,000 from undesignated surplus for the project. Buxton would appropriate $68,000.

Buxton and Hollis belong to School Administrative District 6, which no longer needs either of the two buildings. Buxton Center Elementary School opened last year, consolidating four elementary buildings.

The Hollis building will be open for public viewing from 9:30 a.m.-3 p.m. on Saturday, June 4. And on Tuesday, June 7, Christopher Closs, a field service adviser at Maine Preservation, will talk on the advantages and economic benefits of reusing old schools, at 6:30 p.m. at the Hanson School, Route 22, in Buxton Center. The talk is sponsored by the Buxton-Hollis Historical Society.

“We would like to see both towns preserve their historic buildings,” Jan Hill, president of Buxton-Hollis Historical Society, said last week.

Gardner, as well as Roberta Ramsdell and Rita Anderson, head up the campaign to save the old Hollis school. Ramsdell said a petition drive collected 250 signatures to put the proposal on the ballot as a citizens’ initiative.

The school district has been utilizing Hollis High School as an alternative education learning center. The former Buxton high school, the S.D. Hanson School, had been converted to an elementary school, part of the Hanson-Jewett School complex.

Future uses for both old school buildings could be as community centers.

Built at a cost of $36,958.29, Hollis High School was dedicated in 1942. To build the school, Hollis raised $15,800 by selling timber from town property; appropriated $6,200 from the town budget; and borrowed $15,000.

“It’s the only municipal brick building in town,” Anderson said.

Advocates of saving the building estimate replacement cost at $1.1 million, while assessed value is $585,000. Gardner said Hollis needs a place for groups to meet and that a master plan would have to be developed to determine future uses that could include a teen center or library.

“Hollis has no meeting place or activities place,” Gardner said.

The old school doesn’t have a gym, but Ramsdell said a Quonset hut was erected in the rear of the school in 1951-1952 to house one.

The last year the building was a high school was 1961, before Bonny Eagle High School opened.

The old school is adjacent to Hollis Elementary School. Marean said the old building would be returned with just the land it sits on.

“It becomes a non-conforming lot,” Marean said.

If voters approve of accepting the school, proponents say a lease would have to be worked out with the school district for parking. Use of the well and septic system would also be shared with the school district. “They’re willing to work with us,” Gardner said.

Marean said the cost of heating the building is also a concern and its acquisition would create problems. “All kinds of concerns with it,” Marean said.

Rain runoff seeps into a first floor room, but Gardner said there are no mold problems. In recent years, windows have been replaced, as has been the steam heating system.

“I understand the roof is good,” Ramsdell said.

The building has original hardwood floors and stairways. “This wood is solid,” said Ramsdell, handling a railing baluster inside the school.

“It’s extremely well constructed,” Gardner said.

A 1947 graduate of Hollis High School, Anderson said her class had 13 students and it graduated on a Friday the 13th.

Recalling some of her school-days memories, Anderson said she usually walked or biked the 4.5 miles to school but on occasion rode in a teacher’s car.

“No buses – everybody had to get here on their own,” she said last week while standing on the school lawn.

She recalled playing softball in a farmer’s hayfield across the road from the school and very few of the girls had ball gloves. Slabs of wood served as bases.

Back then, 64 years ago, dresses or skirts were mandatory school attire.

“We couldn’t wear slacks,” said Anderson, a retired adult ed teacher at Bonny Eagle.

Anderson’s high school graduating class included two veterans who made it home after military service in the war. There’s sentiment in Hollis for saving its school.

“We understand the passion for it,” Marean said.

Besides the drive to save the old Hollis High School, Gardner is challenging the incumbent, Severance, for a three-year term on the Hollis Selectmen Board.

In front of the old Hollis High School, Roberta Ramsdell makes sure voters get the message about saving the building. (Staff photo by Robert Lowell)

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