School board to seek levy increases

As Kalispell gears up for opening a second high school and instituting a middle school in another year and a half, the school board is poised to ask voters for a levy increase this spring.

District Clerk Todd Watkins said he will recommend 2006-07 levies of $350,765 in the high school district and $96,521 in the elementary district. (Individual taxpayer assessments are not yet available.)

The school board will consider the levy request at its meeting Tuesday, March 14.

At a workshop last week, trustees said they want to make it clear that this is the second part of requests that were put to voters in 2004.

In November that year, voters approved $50.7 million in school construction bonds to build Glacier High School, renovate Flathead High and expand and renovate Kalispell Junior High into a middle school.

At that time, school officials let the public know that the bonds would build the schools, but additional operation and maintenance levies certainly would be needed to open and run them.

There has been no high school levy request for the past two years, as trustees worked to show fiscal responsibility after winning the bond vote.

The board also is considering starting a pay-to-play system to help cover costs of extracurricular activities.

Last week, Watkins told the trustees that both districts received enough funding from the special session to take care of next year's budgets.

But the levies will be needed to pay for anticipated costs of running the additional square footage of the middle school, buying materials and planning for the middle school transition, and for running the additional square footage of Glacier High, duplicating activities, covering additional curricular needs, buying materials and planning for the two-high-school transition.

This month's levy proposals come after the Office of Public Instruction released per-student entitlement data March 1. But the levy amounts will not be firmed up until after the state Department of Revenue provides final property valuations in the fall.

Watkins presented preliminary budget figures at a school board workshop last week, before the OPI data were out.

He noted that the state Legislature's special session this winter provided recurring funding of $415,00 in the high-school district and $442,000 in the elementary.

That will help considerably, he said, but the school still should be concerned about dropping enrollment.

Traditionally, Kalispell loses about one percent of its student numbers between the first enrollment count in October and the second count in February. The state averages those two numbers to figure "average number belonging," or ANB, and come up with per-student funding it doles out to Montana school districts.

This year, however, the drop was three percent, meaning the anticipated state funding figured in October was quite a bit more than actually received.

The first draft of the 2006-07 budgets proposed bumping up next year's general fund in both districts but staying below the cap in both.

This year's elementary general fund stands at almost $12.175 million. The draft proposal would move that to $12.777 million. It represents an increase of 4.94 percent.

The current high-school general fund is about $13.559 million. Last week's proposal moved that to $14.138 million. That's an increase of 4.27 percent.