West Valley School expansion rejected

West Valley voters rejected the school district's $3.5 million bond request Tuesday.

About 56 percent of West Valley's 1,950 registered active voters participated in the mail-ballot election. Of those, 678 opposed the bond issue; 422 voted in its favor.

Had it passed, money from the bond sales would have been used to build an 18,000-square-foot addition off the current building's library. The addition would have become a wing for West Valley's sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders.

School board trustees had asked voters to approve the bond issue because West Valley School's enrollment has swelled in the last several years.

In the last decade, enrollment rose 33 percent, more than any other Flathead County school district. At the end of the school year, there were 433 students enrolled at West Valley.

That number is expected to climb again next fall, although perhaps not as dramatically as in recent years. Superintendent Todd Fiske has said he expects more than 15 new students in 2010-11.

The school doesn't yet know where to put those kids. Fiske said before the election that if the bond failed, Plan B was putting a classroom on the stage or using temporary walls to convert the lunchroom into classroom space.

The school board will canvass the election at its next meeting June 22.