Vote yes for elementary bond

Should Kalispell Public Schools expand two elementary schools and build a new central kitchen?

That question faces school district voters as a mail election reaches its final week.

Ballots are due Tuesday for the district’s request for $3.35 million for a three-part building program: four new classrooms and a multipurpose room at Peterson Elementary School, four new classrooms at Edgerton Elementary School, and a new kitchen near Kalispell Middle School.

The new class space would address overcrowding at the kindergarten through second-grade levels and help the district meet state accreditation requirements for class size.

The new kitchen would address health and safety concerns at the current central kitchen at Flathead High School.

The overriding concern behind the funding requests is simple: too many kids in the classrooms.

Kalispell schools have been regularly violating accreditation standards that call for no more than 20 students per classroom in kindergarten through second grade.

This spring, kindergarten class sizes averaged 24 students, first grade 22 students and second grade 25 students.

Hence the bond request.

In this improving but still challenging economic climate in Kalispell, it’s difficult to endorse anything that raises taxes. However, the school additions would cost a relatively small amount — around $19 a year on a home valued at $200,000.

That’s probably a third of what it might cost taxpayers to fund an entirely new elementary school. That option was considered by school officials but shelved because of concerns that the current enrollment surge may be just a bubble and not a permanent increase.

Other alternatives, such as abandoning full-time kindergarten and returning to half-day sessions, were considered as a way to free up classrooms and staffers. But that option also comes with its own set of problems.

In the end, building just a few classrooms appears to be the conservative, cautious way to deal with an enrollment overload.

Although we’ve questioned the fiscal maneuvers of Kalispell schools in the past — and we still have doubts about some accounting of tax dollars — we think our youngest students deserve a less-crowded education and voters should support the bond request.