$15.8M bond issue may go before voters this fall
The carpet-covered gymnasium at Somers Middle School on May 22. The Somers-Lakeside School District is planning to recommend the board approve going out for a $15.8 million bond issue in the fall. (Brenda Ahearn photos/Daily Inter Lake)
Schematics of the proposed construction for Somers Middle School. (Brenda Ahearn/Daily Inter Lake)
Superintendent Joe Price in the shop room at Somers Middle School on May 22. (Brenda Ahearn/Daily Inter Lake)
With the bond, the shop area at the middle school would be moved upstairs and expanded to accommodate more students.
A $15.8 million bond issue may be put before Somers-Lakeside residents in the fall to renovate an aging Somers Middle School.
Somers-Lakeside School District is planning to make the recommendation to the school board in June following discussions by a facilities task force that began meeting in January, according to district Superintendent Joe Price.
If the board approves the recommendation, the $15,793,450 bond issue may go before voters in October. If voters then approve the bond issue, owners of homes with taxable values of $200,000 could anticipate an annual tax increase of $160. The bond would span 20 years.
The bond issue would fund proposed plans to build a new addition while remodeling a wing of the school built in the 1990s. Once completed, two older wings of the building — built in the 1950s and 1960s — would be demolished.
Preliminary plans include a new gym, fitness area, stage, science lab, shop, music/band and practice rooms, storage, kitchen, commons and classrooms along with remodeling the library and art room while designating space for a flexible, multipurpose room.
New construction would encompass approximately 44,810 square feet. About 12,280 square feet of existing space would be remodeled.
During the planning process the facilities task force kept in mind the middle school would “serve as a community center as well as an educational facility,” with more opportunities for hands-on learning while planning for growth.
The finished building will have a capacity of around 270 students, according to Price. Currently there is about 180 sixth- through eighth-graders attending the middle school. There have been ongoing discussions about moving fifth grade to Somers Middle School to open up room at Lakeside Elementary.
“We’re anticipating growth taking into account that at Lakeside Elementary we don’t have any room,” Price said.
REQUESTING A bond issue is something that has been on the horizon following a May 2016 vote by Somers-Lakeside School board against sending its sixth- through eighth-graders to a proposed new middle school in Kalispell in May 2016.
The district’s former superintendent — Paul Jenkins, who retired at the end of the 2016 school year — saw the partnership as an alternative to levies or bond issues. Following the Somers-Lakeside decision, Kalispell Public Schools board tabled building a new middle school.
Informing the Somers-Lakeside board decision were results from an online survey the district put out to the community that showed a majority of respondents favored a bond issue to retrofit and build an addition onto the middle school rather than send students to Kalispell.
While Somers-Lakeside taxpayers would not have contributed to building a new middle school, the district would have lost an estimated 170 to 200 students and with them, roughly $1 million in state funding. About 23 staffers’ jobs may also have been at stake.
In the meantime, Somers-Lakeside School District continues to chip away at a laundry list of deferred maintenance with a levy that taxpayers approved in May 2015, which brings $185,000 into the district annually and is shared between the Lakeside Elementary and the middle school.
The Somers-Lakeside School District board meeting is scheduled at 6 p.m. June 19 at Lakeside Elementary.
For more information, visit http://www.somersdist29.org.
Reporter Hilary Matheson may be reached at 758-4431 or hmatheson@dailyinterlake.com.