Board postpones decision on school boundaries

Boundaries have been proposed to determine who attends Flathead High School and Glacier High School, when it opens during fall 2007 - but the idea needs to percolate through the community for a while before it is finalized.

That's the conclusion reached by Kalispell school trustees Tuesday evening.

"Would we be criticized for acting too quickly?" school board Chairman Don Murray asked his colleagues after the proposed boundaries were discussed.

He voiced the sentiment of other trustees, who admitted that a story in Monday's newspaper was the first they had heard of the plan.

If they had not seen the finished product until then, they reasoned, the community probably would need more time to consider it and respond.

Joe McCracken, former superintendent and facilitator of the committee that developed the plan, explained the committee's work to School District 5 board members during a special meeting at the junior high.

The boundary proposal was a unanimous decision of a committee of representatives from 15 of the 18 elementary school districts that send their high-schoolers to Kalispell.

Three districts - Smith Valley, Deer Park and Pleasant Valley - did not send representatives to the meetings, though McCracken said all were invited two or three times to be part of the process.

While meeting during a two-month period this spring, the committee members spoke to various community groups and brought their concerns back to the group.

Their proposal:

-Glacier High School would include West Valley, Helena Flats, Evergreen and Olney-Bissell districts, plus Edgerton and Russell schools in Kalispell.

-Flathead High School would take students from Fair-Mont-Egan, Creston, Cayuse Prairie, Kila, Pleasant Valley, Somers/Lakeside, Marion, Deer Park and Smith Valley districts, as well as Elrod, Hedges and Peterson schools in Kalispell.

Enrollments from other schools - the committee cited Trinity Lutheran and St. Matthew's - were estimated, then divided evenly between the two high schools. Students' addresses would be the determining factors for attendance.

Balancing them all would put 1,372 students at Flathead and 1,273 at Glacier in 2008. That difference would roughly maintain itself.

McCracken reminded board members that Flathead has held 1,900 students in the past, while Glacier's top capacity is planned for 1,500.

The schools would have "soft" attendance boundaries that allow students to petition to attend the other high school for a variety of reasons.

McCracken said the committee based its decision on four prime considerations: keeping each elementary school's population together as it moved to high school, having close to 1,200 students at Glacier High in two years, striving for socio-economic and city/rural diversity at both schools, and coming to a reasonable balance of other factors such as transportation and enrollment.

Committee members analyzed housing developments and expected growth trends. They found a 2 percent growth projection much too low in some elementary districts and about right in others.

To avoid a "poor school/rich school" scenario, McCracken said, the committee tallied students qualifying for free and reduced-price lunches. The balance came to 44.4 percent at Flathead and 42.2 percent at Glacier.

But, McCracken told the board, feedback from the various communities showed clearly that people are much more concerned with the curriculum offered at each of the high schools than where the attendance lines are drawn.

People were worried that one school would be academically superior to the other.

"The answer was absolutely not," McCracken said. "We told them the school board was not going to allow one school to be better than the other school, and the community will not allow that."

Curriculum will be different, he acknowledged, but of equal quality.

One instance is the International Baccalaureate Programme that is in place only at Flathead, which would be balanced with advanced-placement and in-depth courses at Glacier.

"I'm really impressed with the rationale and the thought process" the committee used in coming up with its recommendation, trustee Keith Regier said.

"And the diverse group which had input," trustee Brad Walterskirchen added.

Still, the board wanted more time to get a feel for community opinion.

"The first I heard of this was in the paper yesterday," trustee Mark Lalum said. "We need to filter this through the community and let it out there for a while."

The board floated questions about tabling a decision or taking a vote Tuesday but holding out the option of modifying it later.

"I can understand waiting a while and letting it get out for a while," trustee Colleen Unterreiner said. "But the process was very comprehensive and inclusive. That's important."

Board members unanimously agreed to table action until their Aug. 9 meeting.

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