There was a collective sigh of relief in many corners of Amherst Monday night.

After much discussion over several months, the Town Council unanimously voted to seek state support for a new school to replace Wildwood and Fort River elementary schools.

The council followed the School Committee’s lead in authorizing Superintendent Michael Morris’ request to send a two statements of interest — essentially, a request for a lot of state money to offset the new school’s price tag — to the Massachusetts School Building Authority, or MSBA.

The decision, which comes two years after the saga to build twin schools failed, is a wise educational move — and perhaps fiscal, too, given the porous state of the current schools. Unlike last time, this well-thought-out plan has the overwhelming community support and consensus MSBA officials look for in new school projects. The state should approve this one.

Make no mistake: This is a huge step for the town and the most important decision its new governing body will make in years. We’re glad they got it right. But the work is just beginning.

The plan to be presented to the MSBA by its April 12 deadline looks like this: One new school would be constructed for 600 students in either grades K-5 or K-6. Students from Wildwood and Fort River would attend the school, while the town’s other elementary school, Crocker Farm, stays as is.

The district would vacate Wildwood and Fort River, two schools where poor conditions — leaky roofs, out-of-whack temperature zones, rodents, an unsafe main entry and a noisy open-classroom model, to name just a handful of enduring problems — are doing a tremendous disservice to the next generation. According to a survey of teachers statewide, 83 percent of teachers said the physical environment of classrooms in their school supports teaching and learning. At Fort River and Wildwood, it’s 9 percent and 24 percent, respectively.

There are still outstanding questions about this plan. Among those are where the building will be located and whether to move the sixth grade to the middle school, as the new school would have room for 150 fewer students than the plan the town rejected in 2017. That failed plan called for building twin elementary schools and reconfiguring grades.

These decisions will come in a later phase during feasibility studies and as the nitty-gritty details are sorted out.

There’s no question that a huge project such as this one, when combined with the town’s other capital needs, will surely raise property taxes. But so too would renovation of the schools, which would have to happen regardless.

This is the best way forward for the community. The MSBA made it clear what Amherst needed to do for successful bids: show us consensus from the community. That’s been done. Now the ball is in the hands of the MSBA, which later this year will weigh all of the proposals it receives from communities statewide.

We’re betting Amherst will be on that list — and will be on the way to a new building its community will be proud of.