Jeff Wells stood outside school district offices Monday with a thick stack of petitions in hand, each sheet’s corners lightly rumpled from being passed back and forth across tables, between hands and in and out of bags and folders.

“We’re asking for a reset,” said Wells, a co-founder of the Concord Concerned Citizens group.

That “reset” would come, they hope, by way of voters forcing the school board to go back on its decision to relocate the middle school to the other side of the city. Currently capped at $152 million, the project is set to be built adjacent to Broken Ground elementary in East Concord. But citizens group members, and supporters backing them, are pushing for a rebuild at the current Rundlett Middle School site in South Concord.

As a result of door-knocking, tabling and holding signing events gathering support across the city over the last 50 days, the group submitted just over 1,500 signatures for review on its petition. Those signatures still need to be verified as registered Concord voters, but the total gives the group a cushion on the less than 1,100 that they needed.

If the petition has enough support, their proposed changes to the school district charter could go on city ballots this fall. If approved, it could greatly alter the way the school board operates.

The amendments — the first attempted since the district reworked its charter three years ago — would eliminate some of the board’s power, forcing it to get voter sign-off before changing the location of any district school. Notably, school district officials contest whether the language would even apply to the middle school project since the school board already voted on the location last year.

As he rang the buzzer to enter district offices, Wells had a map of the addresses of the petition’s signers. As a result of the organizers’ focus on areas both near the curent Rundlett Middle School site and the one proposed to house the new school next to Broken Ground, it showed dense clusters of support in both those neighborhoods.

School board members have criticized the group’s mission, saying that — with a schematic design finalized and the project soon to go out to bid — backtracking on the location would mean delaying a project that teachers and other staff assert Concord badly needs. Plus, the board has argued that any delay it would add to the already-steep price tag. Some residents, even those who preferred a rebuild at Rundlett, have echoed this worry.

For the citizens’ group, ensuring that Concord’s new middle school is built on South Street is more important than ensuring it is built as soon as possible.

The group also disagrees with the board’s claim that redoing the design process at the South Street location would mean a higher bill for taxpayers. They think that the potential savings of rebuilding in the South End would be enough that it would still be cheaper, even with possible additional planning work. They also argue the district could move ahead on South Street without their contracted architect at all.

The current project timeline has a new school opening in fall 2028. If it’s later than that, member Bob Maccini said, it would be due to the school board’s choice of the Broken Ground site despite public outcry.

“The overwhelming public opinion was, and is, to rebuilt at Rundlett,” Maccini said. “If they had listened to the voters at the time, we would be well on our way to building a new school in the South End right now.

“There’s no disagreement that we need a new school. But if there’s a delay, it’s on them.”