EAST GREENWICH — Anticipating that voters will approve a construction bond issue before the end of the year, school officials for months have been working with consultants and architects to design a proposed replacement for the aging Archie R. Cole Middle School.

The new three-story school, with an estimated price tag of $39.5 million, would rise on the Cedar Avenue site of the current building. In April, the Board of Regents for Elementary and Secondary Education approved that plan for state reimbursement as part of a $52-million borrowing package for capital improvements.

The approval came with a sixth-month deadline for holding a local referendum, meaning it could be held no later than Oct. 23, but local officials have requested a waiver that would allow it to be placed on the November general election ballot.

School officials have been working since December with architect Symmes Maine & McKee Associates and consultant Strategic Building Solutions to produce blueprints for the new school that would house grades 6, 7 and 8. (Cole, although functioning under a middle school model, houses only grades 7 and 8.)

Responding to neighbors’ complaints that the new building would be too close to their properties, planners agreed to relocate the footprint a few hundred feet farther away. The building design is scheduled to come before the School Committee next Tuesday.

The Board of Regents’ approval of the bond package came with some conditions, among them that the middle school be 10,000 square feet smaller than originally proposed and that science rooms at East Greenwich High School be renovated rather than be replaced with new construction.

With the savings realized from those cuts, school officials reconfigured the $52-million plan to include renovation work at the town’s four elementary schools. That work would include replacing the floors at Meadowbrook; installing sinks and modifying countertops in five classrooms at Frenchtown; expanding and renovating administrative office areas and the main entrance at Hanaford, and converting some classrooms at Eldredge into computer labs, an expanded library and special-education spaces.

Supt. Charles E. Meyers said the Regents agreed to 30 percent state reimbursement for only $44.3 million worth of work, not the entire $52 million.

If the voters approve the bond package, the new middle school could be built in time to open in the fall of 2011, Meyers said.

The School Department has been holding informal information sessions at Cole to keep neighbors abreast of the design work for the new school. A third session is scheduled for 5 p.m. today.

Many neighbors have mixed feelings about the project.

Ilene Hoffmann, who has lived behind Cole for about 35 years, said she thinks the project is extravagant.

“This type of three-story structure does not belong in a residential neighborhood,” Hoffmann said yesterday. “I’m not happy about having a 45-foot building in my backyard … no matter how many trees you put up. I feel this is a lavish structure and we having a hard time filling our gas tanks … home heating oil that is through the roof this winter … Narragansett Electric wants a huge increase. It’s not appropriate at this time. ”

lsparks@projo.com