County taxpayers invest heavily in education

The last decade has been one of transformation and growth for several school districts in the Flathead Valley.

Supporting these transformations are Flathead County taxpayers through approximately $134.6 million in bond issues to cover completed and current expansions and renovations in Bigfork, Somers-Lakeside, Kalispell, West Valley and Whitefish.

Over the past 10 years, public schools countywide absorbed 1,212 more students, representing a 9 percent increase, according to the 2018 Statistical Report of Schools from the office of the Flathead County Superintendent of Schools. Total enrollment in public schools stands at 14,493 students.

The decade’s fastest-growing school districts are Kalispell and West Valley in grades kindergarten through eighth. Both districts continue planning in attempts to get ahead of the curve of continued residential development.

WEST VALLEY

For West Valley, the decade brought in an additional 214 students — a 49 percent increase. What made it possible to absorb the increase was a $6.8 million bond issue voters approved in 2013 to build a middle-school addition completed in 2015.

Each year the building gets closer to capacity and a new elementary school may become a necessity in a few years.

“Over 15, 16 years, we’ve had about 4.5 percent growth every year,” West Valley Superintendent Cal Ketchum noted. “Some years there’s a boom of 10 percent, a couple of years no change, but it’s been pretty constant at 4.5 percent,”

This year, enrollment increased by 36 students, or 6 percent.

The upward trend may continue, if the economy holds, with residential construction of single-family homes, duplexes and fourplexes planned in various projects for the area.

“Our boundaries cover West Reserve to the Kidsports area. Everything west of there, a lot of it, is in our school district,” Ketchum said, adding, “You can drive out by Three Mile and Spring Creek and see the machinery out.”

“We still have room — we’re not busting out at the seams — but it really depends on how fast these units are built,” Ketchum said.

With that said, the district is preparing for the need to build a new elementary in the near future and is in conversations with a landowner regarding property between Stillwater and Spring Creek according to Ketchum.

“We’re looking at another elementary school within the next three years,” Ketchum said.

KALISPELL

Elementary overcrowding and aging high school facilities were key factors leading up to the decade’s biggest bond issues in the county’s largest school district — Kalispell Public Schools.

Elementary schools and the middle school, for the most part, have maintained enrollment, or grown by 1 to 2 percent, from year to year as projected by planners during a long-term facility planning process begun in 2015.

Over 10 years, grades kindergarten through eighth grade have gained an additional 349 students — a 13 percent increase.

Overcrowding was brought to the forefront when an enrollment bubble at the kindergarten through second-grade level began to grow in the years leading up to 2012, when voters approved a $3.3 million bond issue to construct four classrooms at Peterson and four at Edgerton in addition to a new central kitchen. “Super” or “mega” classrooms, where two teachers taught as many as 38 students, were also created. However, these were short-term solutions and when the classrooms opened in the 2013-14 school year, they filled quickly. From the summer of 2015 to 2016, a group of district staff, community and business members established a long-term facility plan looking out to the next 20 years.

The fruit of their labor was the passage of a $25.3 million bond issue for the elementary district and $28.8 million for the high school district.

The elementary bonds resulted in construction of Rankin Elementary, which opened this year at 2155 Airport Road. After Rankin was built, elementary boundaries and bus routes were revised to alleviate overcrowding and return displaced students to their neighborhood schools.

The bonds are also funding the expansion and renovation of the district’s five existing elementary schools; those upgrades are nearing completion.

In the high school district — which encompasses Kalispell and 13 outlying partner districts whose students move on to attend Flathead or Glacier high schools — the concern wasn’t so much enrollment growth as it was renovating aging facilities. Bonds funded major renovations to Legends Stadium, completed in 2017, and ones currently underway, including demolition/expansion work at Flathead High School, Linderman Education Center and H.E. Robinson Vocational Agriculture Center.

Yet, even as construction on Kalispell schools is still underway, the district continues to plan for growth.

Rankin, which was built to accommodate 450 students, has already reached more than 400. Edgerton’s enrollment is also creeping up, with more than 500 students. Flatau said the goal is to keep Rankin at an enrollment of 400 and Edgerton at 500. With four other schools that have space available, a slight revision may need to be done to balance out the numbers.

“I think we can do a better job in balancing it out across the six elementary [schools],” Flatau said.

Flatau explained why enrollment will need to be tweaked.

“The reason we want to get Rankin and Edgerton below those numbers, as I shared before, is because the majority of [residential] growth to the south and to the north impact those two schools significantly,” he said.

Flatau estimates the middle school will reach capacity around the time a seventh elementary is necessary. The middle school is the largest in the state with an enrollment of 1,050 sixth- through eighth- graders. The goal is to cap enrollment at 1,100 students.

The district is tracking residential development closely.

“The city is not 100 percent fully developed, but there’s much more room in the county,” Flatau said. “I will tell you the majority of the residential developments as of late are going in the West Valley elementary district. We’re seeing expansion south of town by Rankin — right across from Airport Road. And we knew this.”

Without a crystal ball to predict how many students residential development will bring in, Flatau said, based on the growth patterns it may be within five years when the district will seek another bond issue to build a seventh elementary and potentially a second middle school.

“The great news is we have property for both,” Flatau said.

The 25-acre parcel on which Rankin is located was purchased with the intention to build a second middle school. The most recent land purchase was a 12-acre parcel of property north of town as a future elementary site. It is located west of Whitefish Stage Road in the vicinity of Easthaven Baptist Church. Rose Crossing will serve as the northern boundary.

In a November 2017 Daily Inter Lake article, Kalispell Planning and Building Director Tom Jentz said the area surrounding the 12-acre property is intended for residential development and predicted future growth may be comparable to Edgerton, located on Whitefish Stage Road, and its surrounding neighborhoods.

WHITEFISH

Whitefish School District continues to transform with current construction of a new elementary school funded by a $26.5 million bond issue passed in 2017. The new school is slated to open in 2020. As part of the bond issue, the majority of Muldown Elementary will be demolished.

Enrollment and aging facilities factored into the elementary bond issue.

Muldown is the state’s largest kindergarten through fourth-grade school, with an enrollment of around 716 students this year. Over the last decade, enrollment in kindergarten through eighth grade has increased by 207 students over the past decade, a 19 percent increase.

The new elementary school project follows a $23 million Whitefish High School expansion and renovation project completed in 2014. Taxpayers funded $14 million in bonds for the project, with the remaining money coming from private donations and tax-increment finance district revenue. The primary reason for the high school project was aging facilities. The high school is slowly regaining students after a period of declining enrollment. Over 10 years, there are an additional 13 students, a 3 percent increase.

The Center for Sustainability and Entrepreneurship, which opened this year, was built through private funding and grants totaling $2.65 million. The center, which features a greenhouse and classroom building, was constructed to become a “net-zero energy building.” A net-zero or “zero-energy” building means the energy consumed over the duration of a year is about equal to the renewable energy produced at the facility.

BIGFORK and SOMERS

For Somers-Lakeside and Bigfork school districts, aging buildings were the primary concern in floating bond issues.

Bigfork School District passed a $14 million bond issue in 2015 to fund an addition and renovation to its high school. The project was completed in 2017.

Somers Middle School will begin its $15.8 million transformation in March. Additions and renovations to the existing building were set to begin last spring, but were halted and plans scrapped when soil reports revealed problematic soils. Architects went back to the drawing board. As a result, a new building will be constructed east of the existing school. Another soil report shows the school can be built in the new location with stone column foundation reinforcement, according to Somers-Lakeside Superintendent Joe Price.

Elements of the original plan are incorporated in the new design, but in a tighter, two-story configuration.

The existing school will be demolished, except for about 11,300 square feet of the 1993 wing. The retained wing will not house students, as it is located on the problematic soil. It has been proposed to remodel the space into a storage facility, connecting it to the new building with a breezeway.

Reporter Hilary Matheson may be reached at 758-4431 or hmatheson@dailyinterlake.com.