Gorham voters Tuesday overwhelmingly passed a referendum to make improvements at two aging schools while rejecting a separate referendum to borrow $2.5 million to relocate tennis courts.

“The School Committee will need to consider the next steps for the tennis courts as we collaborate to rework our 10-year capital needs planning document,” Superintendent Heather Perry said in an email to the American Journal Wednesday. “The Finance/Facilities Committee will begin this important work at our next meeting, which will be held on Nov. 26 at 6 p.m. at Village Elementary School.” 

Voters approved the facilities referendum by 6,530 to 4,657. It gives the school department the authority to borrow $9.5 million to expand the high school cafeteria and add six modular classrooms, among other improvements at the school opened in 1959. The approval also funds an HVAC replacement project at Narraganset Elementary School, which opened in 1981.

The high school, located off Morrill Avenue, was last renovated in the mid-1990s to handle 750 students.

Perry said in her monthly blog that the Gorham High School enrollment is 815 and projections are for it to grow to 900 within three years.

If voters had rejected the referendum, Perry said school officials would have had to “regroup” to figure out the next steps at the high school. Taxpayers would have been asked, Perry said, to pay for cost of the Narragansett HVAC project in a capital improvements request added to the next school department budget.

Total cost of the project, including $3.2 million in interest wrapped in over 20 years, is $12.7 million.

Voters resoundingly defeated a referendum 6,539 to 4,327 that would have moved deteriorating tennis courts from the high school campus to the middle school on Weeks Road. Relocation was intended to free up space at the cramped high school campus.

The fate of existing tennis courts, available for public use, is unclear but could send school officials scrambling to collaborate with surrounding communities to provide a location for Gorham tennis teams to play.

Defeat of the tennis courts measure comes after voters in June narrowly passed a $53.4 million school budget by four votes, and then it survived a recount by two votes in a nail-biter.