District 5 plans new schools

The only thing missing from the District 5 school bond election at 1:30 a.m. Wednesday, one school official joked, was the fat lady singing.

By the time dawn lit the sky, she had delivered a virtuoso performance.

Now, Kalispell schools are gearing up to build a second high school, renovate Flathead High, and add a classroom wing, gym and cafeteria at Kalispell Junior High - and have it all ready by fall 2007.

Voters approved the high school's $39.8 million bond request by a 55 to 45 percent margin; the junior high's $10.9 million request was approved by almost 60 percent of voters.

Early precinct results Tuesday night began giving both bond requests tentative leads shortly after 10 p.m.

As more results trickled in from the small army of tabulation judges huddled in the high school conference room - hand-counting paper ballots as a security company delivered locked ballot boxes from the courthouse - cautious optimism began to show in the few gathered trustees and administrators.

District Clerk Todd Watkins' months of meticulous planning had resulted in a smooth counting process and a virtually glitch-free evening of checks and double-checks by teams of precinct tabulation judges.

Judges handed off their tabulated ballots to chairman Teri Smith, with Watkins doing the final tally. With a 91.9 percent turnout on the elementary ballot and 90.3 percent on the high school - the highest in school memory - everyone had their work cut out for them.

But by 1 a.m., school officials broke out the broad, tired smiles.

"It's a pretty big evening," Flathead High Principal Callie Langohr admitted.

"A lot of years of planning by a lot of people go into this," Superintendent Darlene Schottle added.

Now a lot of hours in a few weeks will go into site visits, curriculum discussions and bond bids.

The next step, Schottle said, comes with site visits to out-of-town school buildings completed in recent years by the district's two architectural firms, CTA Architects for the high school and Architects Northwest for the junior high.

Talks among teachers, administrators and trustees also will start laying the foundation for what the curriculum will look like at the two high schools.

"We have had discussions in the general sense," school board chairman Don Murray said. "Is a new high school going to offer essentially the same courses as the existing school, or have some differentiated course offerings?"

State requirements will dictate some of that, and a desire to maintain the "tremendous course offerings," Murray said, will guide the rest.

Watkins said the school district's financial advisers are recommending going out for bid on the bond rates as soon as possible. Rates could climb up from the sub-4 percent levels of recent months, he said, and the school needs to take advantage of the market.

The school also will pay to get a bond rating now, a process that considers financial statements, tax base and local economic situation in rating the district's credit worthiness.

Purchase of 60 acres of state land for the new high school already is cinched through a 5-year lease with option to buy.

Now Chuck Cassidy, the school district's new maintenance and transportation supervisor, will roll up his sleeves as he pores over high school construction plans with the architects in the push to develop construction bid documents.

Initial plans ought to be ready by April or May 2005, Cassidy predicted.

To get there, he's planning on a 90-day public process to gauge reaction to preliminary schematics with sizes and exterior finishes. After that, he'll go through another 90-day process to modify the designs and add more detail on the building's skeleton, mechanical and electrical systems. A "constructability review process" follows, Cassidy said, when teachers, maintenance personnel and others in the school give feedback on whether the plans actually will work.

Construction bid documents should be ready by fall 2005, he estimated, with bids possibly by December 2005 or January 2006.

He's looking for an 18-month process from groundbreaking to expected finish in summer 2007.

Junior high construction will follow a similar process, Cassidy said, but will bring unique challenges caused by building additions around an existing building. Student safety, traffic and other logistics will be worked out to make the project run smoothly.

At Flathead High, workers might be able to finish the minor renovations during the two summers before fall 2007 and cause the least disruption for classes.

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com