Columbia Falls voters to decide $37M bond issue for schools

Glacier Gateway and Ruder Elementary schools are the focus of a proposed $37 million bond issue in Columbia Falls.

At Glacier Gateway the core concern is aging infrastructure. At Ruder Elementary, the need is more space. Both schools have security concerns with current layouts and neither have fire suppression systems.

If approved, the bonds will fund construction of a new school to replace Glacier Gateway. Ruder would get an addition with a new, east main entrance. The entrance of Columbia Falls Junior High would also be remodeled to improve security. New playing fields and parking improvements would be made in a stretch of land between the junior high and Ruder.

Voters will decide the issue through a mail-ballot election. Ballots will be mailed out to approximately 9,000 registered voters on Sept. 19 and are due back in the district administrative office on Oct. 8.

If approved, owners of homes with a market value of $200,000 can expect annual taxes to increase by $145.92. The duration of the bond is 20 years.

Taxpayers may also want to note the bond issue that funded the junior high will come off the tax rolls in June 2020.

Glacier Gateway Principal Penni Anello this week highlighted some of the needs for the bond issue, which if approved, would mean a new 75,000-square-foot school would be built northwest of the existing school to accommodate 644 students. About $24.4 million is slated for the project. Currently enrollment is 501 students.

Glacier Gateway is unique in that it is composed of two connected buildings constructed in different decades. Kindergarten through third grade attends a one-story building believed by the district to have been constructed in the 1950s. Next door, fourth- and fifth-graders attend school in a two-story building constructed in 1940 that originally served as a junior high.

As part of the project, the existing north wing of the existing building will be demolished, while a gymnasium located off the main entrance will be retained and remodeled.

The two-story section of the elementary school, referred to as “the old junior high,” will be buttoned up. It hasn’t been determined what it might be used for in the future. This section also has a gym, which is currently used to serve meals, but as Anello pointed out, it has issues such as a leaking roof.

After being buzzed in at the main entrance, the security concern is evident. To the left, tucked around the corner is the main office, and to the right, a long corridor of classrooms.

“That’s why we installed the camera/intercom system at the front doors. We did that with technology/safety funds two years ago,” she said.

There aren’t easy fixes in the school when it comes to mechanical, electrical and plumbing, according to Anello. Walking down a set of stairs to a space that once served as a locker room, Anello showed the entrance to a tunnel that runs the length of the north wing. This is where a maintenance employee has to crawl through to access pipes, she said. She also noted condensation is problematic in the room.

Water is also an issue in other parts of the building where the roof leaks. She mentioned a section of roofing where ice dams form and melt in the spring where it’s not unusual to see garbage cans lined up to catch water.

“The water sits up there. It freezes, and when the ice dams break, oh my goodness, it just comes in,” she said. “Every day is a new leak.”

Heating and air circulation are also problematic throughout the building.

“I’ll show you the hottest classroom,” she said, walking upstairs to Jane Dew’s fourth-grade classroom.

Nearing the classroom, a rumbling sound was audible in the hallway. The culprit: an old heating/ventilation unit she had turned on to blow cool air. Anello said most of the old units are loud, but when turned off classrooms become stuffy. Dew’s classroom has many windows that actually open, unlike some of her colleague’s classrooms, yet opening them doesn’t seem to combat the heat of the morning sun.

Opening windows, though, compounds the overheating problem in the winter because classroom thermostats aren’t regulating the temperature accurately, according to Anello and Columbia Falls School District Superintendent Steve Bradshaw.

“In the wintertime we ask teachers not to open up the windows, yet their thermostat is kicking up to 90 degrees or something,” Bradshaw said.

“He [the maintenance employee] works on them constantly in the wintertime,” Anello added, referring to the thermostats. “Eight hours a day he’s working on heating and keeping it all together.”

Bradshaw said the motors in the heating units have failed and the parts are not made anymore, so finding replacements takes time. Last July, one motor burned out, causing smoke to fill a classroom, but luckily staff happened to be working in the school at the time to take care of the incident.

In Victoria Forkin’s fourth-grade room, a flap of duct tape covers the internal parts of her heating unit where she has to reach her hand inside to turn it on.

Talking about heating and air circulation issues, reminded Anello of the school’s electrical problems.

“We tried to plug in large fans at each end of our hallways to move the air and it would blow the circuit,” she said, and then pointed to a conduit near the heating unit. “Any of the improvements we’ve done in last 20 years ­— this is our electrical work — it’s outside the walls.”

Bathrooms are also an issue.

“Trying to replace the pipes here,” she said, pausing, “It’s just a mess.”

It’s not just the old plumbing that’s problematic.

“So for 90-ish boys upstairs — fourth- and fifth-grade boys — we have two urinals and one stall. You can imagine what that is like,” she said.

At Ruder, if the bond is approved, the school would be expanded by 24,125 square feet to accommodate up to 644 students, in addition to remodeling the existing building. There would be new classrooms, resource rooms, a dining commons and a music room, among other amenities.

For this project, the district is estimating spending about $10.2 million.

Ruder was built in 1974, with the last major construction project being a classroom and gym addition in the mid-1990s.

Like Glacier Gateway, safety is also a concern at Ruder. Although the main office has a view of the entrance, it is far enough away that visitors could enter hallways and classrooms before checking in. This is why the main entrance is slated to be moved. New administrative offices would be built facing the parking lot and connecting the main school building to an adjacent, smaller building that currently houses second- and third-grade classrooms. The plan is to make the smaller building into a kindergarten wing.

“And we would have a new wing [built] just for fourth and fifth grade,” Glacier Gateway Principal Brenda Krueger said.

Currently, the two buildings are separated by a breezeway that leads out to the playground where the addition would extend. Even though a chain-link fence was installed to prevent people from entering the buildings off the parking lot, Krueger is still concerned about security.

“We tell kids not to open the door, but they see an adult, they’ll open the door,” she said, adding that although the doors are set to lock, wind may keep them ajar.

Space is also a premium at Ruder.

“We are out of space,” Krueger noted.

Over the years, space has been carved out of larger rooms where walls were built to create small rooms for special education/Title 1 instruction. In these small spaces, privacy is limited to curtains hung from the ceiling that separate groups of students.

A sensory room where students go to calm down, or self-regulate, used to be a counselor’s office and was carved out of the staff workroom. She then showed a storage room that was turned into an office for the school psychologist.

“We’re trying to make space out of space,” Krueger said.

With the library housed in what used to be the cafeteria, lunch and breakfast are served in the gym, which means it’s out of commission for P.E. and other activities for two hours a day.

“Because of the gym problem, and the lack of time, we can’t put kindergarten into our specials rotation,” she said while walking over to an entryway with a set of interior and exterior glass-paned doors. Inside the entryway, kindergartners tapped wooden sticks together in music class. Sometimes they also use the space for story time, or on nice days, they’ll go outside to play because they don’t get P.E., she said.

General school storage has dwindled to a long, narrow closet.

Enrollment stands at 482 students. At some grade levels, Krueger said she has to send students to attend Glacier Gateway to maintain state accreditation for class sizes.

“That’s so very hard on families,” Krueger said.

Another alternative is hiring additional paraeducators.

At Ruder, a demographic study completed in November 2018 forecasts enrollment increases through 2022-23, when it’s predicted to slowly decline through 2028-09. Still, administrators wonder how enrollment numbers will pan out, considering a recent subdivision proposal that could add up to 48 single-family homes if approved by the Columbia Falls City Council.

“It’s just an up-and-coming community right now,” Krueger said.

Bradshaw said the question he’s been asked most often during the facility planning process is why the district won’t reopen Canyon Elementary in Hungry Horse. Canyon Elementary was built in the late 1980s and closed in the 2010-11 school year, despite community opposition, after enrollment declines resulted in operating at a deficit. In the time since the closure, the building has been rented out to various organizations, one being the Flathead Community Health Center clinic.

“Financially it doesn’t work,” Bradshaw said, noting that enrollment would need to consistently be around 200 students to break even.

Bradshaw is concerned the district may face the same volatile trend if it was reopened. Currently, just over 100 students from the Canyon area currently attend Ruder and Glacier Gateway. If additional students from the two elementary schools were bused to the Canyon, Bradshaw fears families would withdraw students from the district to attend other schools. It also wouldn’t address the aging Glacier Gateway, or undesirable layout of Ruder conducive to 21st-century learning.

“The learning environment should be a comfortable, safe space, and we can’t make it comfortable right now,” Bradshaw said.

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