Expansion plans considered for Marion School

So far, Ann Glimm said, Marion School has been lucky.

Although it doesn’t meet fire codes, having some of its 123 students attend class in the basement has never led to a tragedy or even a close call, the school board chairwoman said.

The school also has never created handicapped-accessible restrooms because it never has had a student who required them.

But those things could change. Accidents do happen. And if a student who needed a modified restroom moved into the Marion School District, the Americans with Disabilities Act would require the school to build an appropriate restroom, likely at great expense to the district.

It’s time, Glimm said, for Marion to prepare for those possibilities.

For several months, school officials and trustees have discussed possible expansion plans to meet the district’s needs.

Because the plans still are preliminary— trustees are expected to decide at their October meeting if they want to run a bond election — Glimm emphasized that she was speaking for herself, not the board.

“I don’t really want to roll the dice any more,” she said.

While plans aren’t final, the community thus far has been most supportive of an 11,955-square-foot expansion that would cost an estimated $2.2 million, Glimm said.

Trustees and school officials also floated a $685,000 proposal that would have added three new classrooms and new handicapped-accessible restrooms, but the community seemed more supportive of a larger expansion, Principal Justin Barnes said.

“They said we might as well do it all at one time,” he said.

If voters did approve a $2.2 million bond issue, property taxes on a home with a taxable market value of $100,000 would increase almost $78 a year.

Taxes on a home with a taxable market value of $200,000 would increase about $114 a year.

For that price, many problems at Marion School would be corrected, Glimm said.

A state fire inspector visits the school annually, and every year Marion’s basement classroom is “noted,” she said. But the district hasn’t faced fines or been ordered to take action because the inspector “realizes the situation.”

“She realizes we don’t have any other option,” Glimm said. “The principal is in the janitor’s closet. The clerk is in the closet with the hot water heater. We are using every spare inch we have.”

IT helps that there are two staircases out of the basement, Glimm added, but the classroom still violates fire codes.

In addition to getting students out of the basement, the proposed expansion calls for handicapped-accessible restrooms in a centrally located place. Building new restrooms will be much less costly than remodeling existing facilities, Glimm said.

“We have to accommodate every child that comes, whatever their needs are. That’s our responsibility,” she said.

“If we had to tomorrow provide [handicapped-accessible] classrooms and restrooms, it would be very expensive to remodel any existing restrooms. It would be an atrocious amount of money.”

The proposed building project could correct other issues as well, Glimm said. It would eliminate some safety concerns by preventing students from moving between buildings to change classes. It would also improve “educational efficiency,” especially in cold weather.

“The children spend time walking to the front building for Title I and special education,” Glimm said. “They get all bundled up, then a teacher walks them there, where they get unbundled. Then they have to rebundle to walk back over ... we’re not making the most of our instructional time.”

The proposed plan calls for five new classroom spaces, which would be used for fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grades. There also would be new rooms for special education, Title I, counseling, psychology and speech, with a waiting area in front.

There would be a new main office and a principal’s office, which would restore the janitor’s closet to its original function. The district clerk would move into the former school office.

The plan also calls for four restrooms and four storage areas, one each for science, art and English and one labeled “workroom storage.”

The modular building that now houses fourth- and fifth-graders would become a music room and likely would be moved to the back of the gym, where it could also be used to store physical education equipment, Glimm said.

The fate of the front building — the original school, which is about a century old — hasn’t yet been discussed, Glimm said.

“Hopefully somebody in the community would step forward. It’s 100 years old; it would be nice if someone would take ownership of it,” she said.

Discussion about that building likely won’t take place for some time; the earliest the district could run a bond election would be January, clerk Rae Mitchell said.

In the last 16 months, three of the last four bond issues for Flathead County schools have failed. Cayuse Prairie successfully passed a $1.95 million bond issue in November 2009 to build a new gym, but bond requests in Kila, Fair-Mont-Egan and West Valley were vetoed.

Other issues, including a high school building reserve levy and elementary general fund levy in Kalispell, have failed in the last year as well.

But Glimm said those statistics don’t make her nervous.

“I think that each community is a different community. I have faith in our community,” she said. “I know the economy’s tough, but when you break it down to how much each person has to pay for the bond ... and if you make a sacrifice, it’s to better education for our kids.”

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com.