EDITORIAL: High-school bond worthy of your vote

Voters just need to look at the facts:

• The infamous half-floors at Flathead High School.
• An antediluvian electrical system (complete with vintage fuses) at Linderman Education Center.
• A worn-out playing surface at Legends Stadium.
• A gym at Flathead that was outdated 65 years ago.
• Cramped conditions at the H.E. Robinson Agricultural Education Center that have required a greenhouse to be converted to a classroom.

Those are a few of the facility shortcomings that a high-school bond request from Kalispell Public Schools is designed to address.

Ballots go out Monday for a mail-in election seeking voter approval of the ambitious $28.8 million high school bond request (separate from a concurrent bond request for $25.3 million for elementary-school improvements).

The high-school district work covers the schools in Kalispell that serve students from a far-flung area well beyond city limits. Students from Marion to Cayuse Prairie and from Lakeside to Helena Flats (and points in between) attend Kalispell high schools.

They, along with school staffers, suffer through the challenges posed by aged school facilities. But they all will benefit if the schools are modernized and renovated.

The community will benefit, too, from revamped school facilities.

The high school bond request facing voters this week (ballots must be returned by Oct. 4) represents a major change in course for Kalispell schools. Rather than attempting — and often not succeeding at achieving — piecemeal projects here and there, a facility planning committee and school leaders have decided to take a broader view and try to upgrade all the schools.

As a series of stories in the Inter Lake over the past four days has outlined, there are serious obstacles to education posed by facility challenges in our schools.

The bond request courageously tries to touch all bases in a comprehensive improvement effort. It will raise property taxes somewhat, of course, but we can’t build and maintain schools without tax dollars. That’s just a fact.

We think the district, its staffers and its students will be well-served if voters approve this bond request — and look for our editorial supporting the elementary-school bond request in the coming days.