NEWS

Great Falls not only school district in need of building bond

Kristen Cates
GreatFalls
A father and daughter stop by the shuttered Central Elementary School in Helena. The old school was closed in the middle of the 2013 school year due to structural safety concerns. Part of the $70 million bond request Helena Public Schools put forward was to pay for renovations of the historic school located in downtown Helena.
  • Next GFPS facilities work session
  • When: 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 4
  • Where: District business offices: 1100 4th St. S.

As Great Falls Public Schools explores the possibility of a bond election to update its aging facilities, the district can gleam some wisdom from the failure and passage of major bond requests in two other Montana cities.

Voters in Helena said no to a $70 million bond request in June and in the fall of 2013, voters in Billings approved a $122 million bond request for buildings. Both votes came as somewhat of a shock to school officials and supporters in each community.

In Helena, a general fund mill levy and technology fund levies have passed with ease over the last several years. Voters in Billings had repeatedly turned down levy elections in the years leading up to 2013.

Great Falls has yet to finalize any of its plans or even decide whether the district will ask voters to approve a bond of any kind. But board chairman Jan Cahill said he's been watching what other communities are doing and how they've approached their aging facilities and enrollment concerns.

Here is a tale of two cities, their schools, and what happened with their levy.

A no vote in Helena

When Kent Kultgen arrived in Helena as superintendent in 2012, he knew he was walking into a district that desperately needed to address its aging facilities.

Conversations had started with his predecessor, Bruce Messigner, and an architectural study from the Mosaic firm, now referred to in Helena somewhat infamously as the 2010 "Mosaic Report," confirmed what everyone knew — the facilities were old.

But Kultgen said it was more than just old buildings. The demographics in Helena have changed over the last decade. Enrollment is holding steady, but 55 percent of the district's elementary students now reside in the north valley, and are thus filling up elementary schools like Jim Darcy, Rossiter and Four Georgians, while enrollment at schools like Broadwater and Hawthorne Elementary remain small.

The district had been busing kids from Jim Darcy Elementary, located on Lincoln Road five miles north of town, into other schools to accommodate the growth. But Kultgen said it's against state education regulations to have kids on a bus for more than an hour at a time. Modular classrooms were added to accommodate the kindergarten growth.

"But it isn't only a K-5 issue," Kultgen said. "Our middle schools need attention, and so do our high schools."

In 2013, in the midst of studying these issues and starting to plan, Kultgen said he became aware of the serious structural concerns at Central Elementary School in downtown Helena. Those students were immediately placed at the closed Lincoln School.

"Central was the biggest key issue of the whole K-5 plan," he said.

Kultgen and the board discussed a couple of different proposals — consolidating some of the elementary schools into super-sized elementary buildings with access to new technology; razing Central School; and finally the proposal to pursue a $70 million bond to address all of the elementary school concerns. It was estimated to cost taxpayers an extra $64 per year on a home with a $100,000 taxable value.

Ellen Feaver, a former school board member who ran the campaign to get the bond passed, admitted that perhaps part of the reason the bond failed is that she and other board members would vote on one proposal, change their mind, and vote on another one, before finally settling on the $70 million bond.

"Our board didn't do our community any favors over the years," she said. "We voted on ideas and then abandoned them."

The final bond that was put out to voters included funds to build a new Jim Darcy, renovate Warren, Smith and Central elementary schools and address long-term maintenance concerns at the rest of the elementary buildings.

Kultgen and Feaver said everyone was aware that this bond wasn't addressing the middle and high school concerns. A future bond, perhaps, would be needed.

Feaver said a "no" campaign was launched when the trustees first voted on the concept of shuttering a few elementary schools for the sake of bigger, 21st century learning environments. Even though the board abandoned those plans, the "save our neighborhood schools" campaign stuck.

But Darryll James, who was the treasurer for the "All Kids Matter" campaign, said the opposition his group mounted was not necessarily about neighborhood schools. Yes, the district was originally capped at a $76 million bond request, but the Montana Legislature gave it authority this year to double its bonding capacity.

"We felt like what they were proposing was a little shortsighted," James said. "What we wanted was just to see a more clear articulation of long-term plans for the district."

There were some in the All Kids Matter campaign who wanted to save neighborhood schools, but James said a lot of people were willing to support consolidated schools if done right and with the resources being spread more equitably around the district — including the middle school and high schools.

James said the All Kids Matter campaign was tagged as being anti-education. But he has two children in Helena Public Schools and said he'd be willing to support a bigger bond amount if it were well thought out.

"It's a good political tagline, and it was abused during this campaign that we were anti-kid and anti-education. Nobody at any time during our campaign suggested $70 million was too much," James said. "We were upset about what we saw as a disingenuous campaign."

A month after the vote failed, Kultgen can see where some mistakes might have been made in effectively communicating their ideas. He also said just because the vote failed, the needs of the district haven't gone away. The average age of the Helena Public Schools buildings is 65.

"You have to be thoughtful in the decisions and once the decision is made, back it," he said. "I believe the community knows we have to do something. It's just a matter of when."

Employees from Valley Excavating work on the ground outside of Jim Darcy Elementary school in the Helena Valley. Jim Darcy is currently overcrowded and can’t accommodate the area’s growth. Helena Public Schools has installed modular classrooms, which the district is hoping won’t be a permanent solution after a $70 million bond election failed in June.

Meanwhile in Billings

Construction is underway on two new middle schools and renovations are in the works or have been completed at 28 other buildings thanks to a $122 million voter-approved bond. It increased taxes by approximately $65 per year on a home with a taxable value of $100,000.

It's a welcome relief for a district thatexperienced explosive enrollment growth by 2012, with classrooms overcrowded by more than 800 students. As the results were tallied in November 2013, Yes for Kids campaign chairman Jim Duncan said he was pleasantly surprised.

"We felt like if the community really understood the need, they would get behind it and they did," Duncan said.

Voters in Billings were not fond of approving school levy elections. In the 10 years prior to November 2013, voters had turned down technology, building reserves, general fund levies — or a combination of all — seven of those years.

"The Billings community has a lot of momentum right now," Duncan said.

Voters had approved a levy for their baseball park and a new library. Plus, the schools were overcrowded. Not only did voters approve the bond election in November, in May, voters approved a general fund levy request to hire additional teachers and a technology levy.

It helped that Yes for Kids was well-organized, and Duncan said new Superintendent Terry Nelsen Bouck and school board members worked really hard to include everyone in the community in discussions about what needed to be in the bond proposal. Renovations on two of the district's oldest elementary schools were included in the proposal, along with new middle schools. Roofs, windows and other needs for the rest of the buildings rounded out the list.

"What was great about it is that there was something for all parts of town," Duncan said. "The school board listened to the community."

He's clear that not everyone in the community was supportive of the bond and voiced frustration over the short timeline. There was even some haggling in preliminary discussions about how much money the district should ask for.

But in September 2013, Duncan said everyone from parents to businesses were helping knock on doors and organizing tours of the aging buildings.

"We wanted it to be successful, and we needed it to be successful," he said.

Duncan said he's not sure why levies weren't approved in years past. All he knows is that there was a lot of group camaraderie behind the bond election. When votes were tallied, the proposal passed 54 percent to 46 percent.

And now, on Aug. 26 he will watch ribbons cut in front of the newly renovated and historic McKinley and Broadwater elementary schools.

"This has been an incredible story," he said.

Reach Tribune Staff Writer Kristen Cates at 791-1463. Follow her on Twitter @GFTrib_KCates.