Schools grapple with levy defeat

Kalispell school officials are regrouping now that voters have rejected a $6 million building reserve and technology levy request.

Taxpayers overwhelmingly rejected the levy in Tuesday’s election.

According to official election results, which the district released Wednesday afternoon, 4,630 people opposed the levy while 2,975 people supported it.

About 25 percent of the high school district’s nearly 31,000 registered voters participated in the election, either by turning up at one of several polling sites or via mail ballot.

The only place the levy passed was at the Flathead County Fairgrounds, where residents of Kalispell’s elementary district voted. At that site, 798 people voted in favor of the levy; 525 people opposed it.

Had the funding request passed, money would have been levied over five years. It would have supported building and technology projects throughout the high school district, which includes Flathead and Glacier high schools, the H.E. Robinson Vo-Ag Center, Linderman Educational Center, the auxiliary services building on East Washington Street and the central office above the Flathead County Library.

Tuesday’s election marked the second time in 17 months that voters rejected a high school building reserve levy. They vetoed a $4.1 million request in 2009. A $2.8 million elementary building reserve levy passed at that time.

The levy’s most recent rejection is a hard loss for the school district to swallow.

“I am disappointed that we [won’t be] able to do the infrastructure maintenance and upgrades that I feel would have had a positive impact on energy savings and the safety of our structures,” Superintendent Darlene Schottle said.

The biggest portion of the levy would have been used to install a fire suppression system at Flathead High School to bring the building up to code.

Kalispell Fire Chief Dan Diehl conducted an in-depth walk-through at the high school in November, an inspection that coincided with Montana’s recent adoption of the 2009 International Fire Code.

The code gave the school more options for addressing its fire safety needs than had existed under the previous fire code. Instead of paying millions for fire walls, special windows and doors and construction to ensure all classrooms were near fire exits, the district could spend less than $1 million to install sprinklers in the portions of the school that lack them.

But without the levy, the $900,000 it would cost to install those sprinklers is likely not in the district’s budget.

“We will meet with the fire chief and talk to him about that,” Schottle said. “He will help us do some prioritization so we’re meeting at least basic safety standards.”

Diehl said he anticipated meeting with district officials within the next three weeks.

“We have talked about a lot of things. I don’t know whether some of those are logistically possible, but we will sit down and figure that out,” he said.

He and Schottle said closing Flathead is not one of those options.

“There are no plans to close the building at all,” Schottle said.

Diehl said some of his suggestions include possibly shutting off circuits in classrooms where the electrical system is oldest, putting students in portable classrooms or creating some sort of split-shift schedule to allow students to share lower-level classrooms with fire exits that open directly outside.

“We are going to look at all of that and come up with some kind of plan to make it safe,” Diehl said.

In addition to safety issues, the district has infrastructure needs that must be taken care of, Schottle said. Those include repairs and maintenance issues as they arise, but there are also several ongoing technological expenses.

Internet access costs the district about $700 a month, said Rich Lawrence, the district’s information technology director. Annual expenses include renewing software, antivirus and network licenses on each of the district’s 2,200 computers. Other infrastructure costs include routers and switches.

Security cameras also are included in the technology costs, Lawrence said. When digital cameras operate all day, every day, they last only two to four years. After that, the lenses start to burn out and the cameras begin to go dark, he said.

That is starting to happen at Glacier High School, he added. Replacement cameras cost anywhere from $1,500 to $3,000 apiece, depending on whether they are mounted inside or outside the school.

All those technology needs add up rapidly, Lawrence said.

“It’s expensive. It’s really expensive,” he said.

School officials estimate that necessary technology and building expenses cost about $435,000 a year. Now that voters have rejected the levy request, that money will have to come from the general fund budget, which already faces a minimum $500,000 shortfall in 2011-12.

School board trustees planned to discuss their budget options at a special meeting Wednesday evening. Those options include making additional cuts to the general fund budget, using program retention funds or asking voters to approve an operational levy.

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