AMHERST — The town’s ambitious school project shot down at Town Meeting in November is getting new life.

More than 50 parents and children ascended the main staircase at Town Hall Tuesday afternoon to drop off petitions, with 420 signatures, asking the Select Board to call a new Town Meeting to reconsider its vote rejecting the $67.2 million project to construct the two new elementary schools.

“We needed 200, so well done everyone,” said Rebekah Demling, a parent and Precinct 7 representative who spearheaded the effort to have the project get a second vote.

Among those who signed were Heather Sheldon, a South Amherst resident whose kindergarten-age daughter should be able to attend Crocker Farm School.

But because the 6-year-old is enrolled in the Building Blocks program, housed at Fort River School, she is instead bused daily out of her neighborhood.

It’s a situation, Sheldon said, that would be solved by the construction of a dual school, each with up to 375 students in Grades 2 to 6 at the Wildwood School site on Strong Street, and the coinciding reconfiguration of the schools that would convert Crocker into early childhood education center.

“Allowing services to serve two school populations in the same building would go an amazing way toward improving my daughter’s self-confidence,” Sheldon said.

The school project was narrowly approved as a Proposition 2½ override by residents at the Nov. 8 presidential election, but Town Meeting turned down authorizing the borrowing, 108-106, last month.

In the lead up to the votes, groups were active both for and against the project, with one calling itself Building Opportunity for Learning and Diversity, or BOLD, and one opposing Save Amherst’s Small Schools, or SASS.

As proposed, the dual school would replace both Wildwood and Fort River schools, both of which have open classroom learning environments that school officials say limits natural light and creates additional noise.

Demling on Tuesday thanked those who signed the petitions and came to Town Hall in a show of force.

“I think it’s a great expression of democracy and applaud everyone for being part of it,” Demling said.

State law requires at least 200 certified signatures to force the Select Board to schedule a Town Meeting session.

In anticipation that sufficient signatures will be certified by the town clerk, the Select Board will meet at 9:30 a.m. on Dec. 28 at Town Hall to set a date for the Town Meeting, which must be held within 45 days of receiving the signatures.

Demling said she wanted to make sure that the date will be in the new year, but also at a time when both the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Hampshire and Amherst colleges are in session. That likely means a date in late January.

Johanna Neumann, the parent of a child at Fort River and another in preschool, said it was important to come to Town Hall to demonstrate that the community values education.

“Right now Fort River and Wildwood are in terrible shape, and the town deserves better,” Neumann said.

Neumann said she also appreciates the support from teachers, as evidenced by many signing the petitions and also circulating one within the schools that contained 160 signatures. This will be among the new information that will be presented to the Town Meeting representatives.

“Going into the first vote there was lack of clarity about how teachers felt about the proposal,” Neumann said.

A week after the vote, parents, children and teachers staged a protest outside Town Meeting, many holding signs indicating that their voices hadn’t been heard.

SASS leader Maria Kopicki, a Precinct 8 Town Meeting representative, was not surprised by Tuesday’s action.

“With the town deeply divided on this proposal, it’s not an unexpected course of action,” Kopicki said in an email Tuesday night. “We hope to move soon to a new approach to address the concerns of our schools in a way that can garner the support of a large majority of our town.”

The revote would also come after town and school officials learned that the Massachusetts School Building Authority would not support a different project with the $34 million grant it pledged.

Meanwhile, Michael Morris, interim schools superintendent, has learned from MSBA attorney Dennis Ryan that if plans are rejected again by Town Meeting before Feb. 2, the schools will be able to formally withdraw the project from funding consideration That would allow the district to then submit statements of interest for both Fort River and Wildwood by April 7.

School officials, with Select Board support, had been applying for project funding both for Wildwood and Fort River for several years before the MSBA selected Wildwood. The dual school option allowed Amherst to move forward with a project that would give all elementary school children suitable learning environments, rather than focusing on improving just one school, officials said.

But the project was criticized as eliminating the neighborhood schools and creating what some called a “mega school” at Wildwood. Any project withdrawal would have to be approved at the Feb. 15 MSBA board meeting.

Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.

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