Task force endorses new $26.5M school

A task force charged with recommending solutions for an aging Muldown Elementary School is endorsing an option to construct a brand new elementary school, while still retaining the functional areas of the existing building.

The new school has an estimated pricetag of $26.5 million, and securing funds for the project will likely require putting a bond issue before Whitefish voters this fall. Following months of review, the Muldown Project Task Force March 21 announced it recommendation during a community forum at the school.

Jay Stagg, Food Service Director for Muldown and member of the task force, said his opinions on the project have changed as he began to understand extent of the school’s issues.

“When we started the process I was in the mindset that we should just fix what we have — spend whatever amount of money, fix what we have and move on,” he said. “But once we started investigating all the different options I’ve completely gone 180 degrees to thinking a brand new school is the way to go.”

The project would feature a new school, to be built over a 30-month period, situated at the corner of East Seventh Street and Pine Avenue, south of Whitefish High School. A new roadway would be constructed between the two schools to mitigate traffic, starting at Pine Avenue and heading east to the where the current Muldown is located.

The existing two-story section of Muldown that was constructed in 1991 would be saved, along with a section to the south next to Seventh Street. A total of 25,000-square-feet would be kept from the original school including the gym, with a parking lot constructed between the two retained sections of the current building.

The new two-story building is proposed to be about 84,000-square-feet and include a new gym. A parent drop-off and parking lot area would located be on the west side of the school next to Pine Avenue.

During the community forum, fourth-grade teacher Jessica Mintz said the positives of building a new school, like more efficient energy use, less disruption to students during construction and having a building tailored to the staff’s needs, outweighed the advantages of keeping and upgrading the current building.

“I think it’s pretty obvious that we would like to make our final recommendation of the third option of building a new school,” said Mintz. “It was very overwhelmingly this option.”

Superintendent Heather Davis Schmidt said the task force’s recommendation will be put before the Whitefish School Board in April or May for a final decision. The board will also have to vote on whether to hold levy election this fall to fund the project.

If the levy passes, it would mean in increase in taxes of about $130 per year for a home in the city with a taxable value of about $240,000, according to District Business Director Danelle Reisch. That works out to roughly about $11 per month over a 20-year period.

Since September of last year, teachers, parents, board trustees and staff have been working with architects and engineers from L’Heureux, Page and Werner to examine options that would address significant issues facing the 50-year-old building. Problems include a failing original heating system, structural issues with the roof, lack of insulation and vapor barriers, inadequate drainage in parking lots, a failing irrigation system, and many mechanical systems far past life expectancy.

Muldown currently serves about 670 students in grades K-4. The school was built in 1966, with a major renovation completed in 1992.

In December the task force narrowed the initial 11 proposals down to just three options. At the time, those included a bare necessities repair of the current school estimated at $9.1 million, an expansion and upgrade of the current school estimated at $16.3 million, and building an entirely new school estimated at $21 million.

The task force’s final recommendation is to construct a new school for 756 students along with retaining part of the current school.

The option is estimated to cost $26.5 million, which includes a 15 percent contingency as certain costs have been estimated higher to account for higher construction costs in the next several years, according to the district.

During the forum, different ideas for how to use the retained portion of the current school were discussed. Options included setting aside the space in anticipation of a state-mandated preschool program, leasing the space to a private preschool or even converting the space to affordable housing units. Retaining the gym could also mean the opportunity for community use of the space.

Davis Schmidt said that no definite plans have been made for how to use the space should it become available.

“One of the options I’m really intrigued by for the first and second grade wing, someone mentioned the idea of affordable housing for our new teachers and staff as a transition housing opportunity,” Davis Schmidt said.

“There’s nothing written in stone about any of these things at this point in time. Doing the design work will come after the bond,” she added.

During the forum, Muldown staff shared their concerns with the current building and how they’re constantly forced to work around its shortcomings.

For Mintz and others, student safety is easily the top priority. After completing active resistance training, Mintz said she took a closer look at the school’s safety options and didn’t like what she found.

“During the active resistance training the police officers went around to different areas of the building and shot off their guns, and we really couldn’t hear,” she said. “That really made us think that if something happened, we would not have time to barricade the doors.”

“That was pretty scary,” she said. “I did lose sleep [over that].”

A failing heating system was the other big concern for teachers.

Kayla Ryan, a third grade teacher, described how she has to adapt to cold temperatures in her classroom.

“My classroom is located in the 1966 portion and it’s on a corner, so I have two outside walls with very little insulation. What I get to experience is the extreme cold. A lot of times I have kids who ask to wear their coats in my classroom daily,” Ryan said.

District Maintenance Director Chad Smith arrives at 5 a.m. every school day to ensure the heating system is functioning and address any problems that might come up during the day.

Overcrowding is also a big issue for the school, which currently houses 670 students, the most of any elementary school in Montana. Teachers reported traffic jams at the hallway near the cafeteria, nicknamed “disfunction junction,” where several different classes of students get stuck trying to pass each other in the narrow hall. The new Muldown plans keep student population growth in mind, allowing for up to 756 students in case of a population surge.

A demographic study completed by the district last year predicts a slight drop in elementary enrollment, estimating a population of 606 students around 2025, but Davis Schmidt said the worst thing the district could do is build a school without enough space.

A recent survey conducted by the school district over voters showed a slight majority of the 255 respondents favored an upgrade and expansion over a new school, however, support for a new building rose slightly after surveyors provided more information on the school’s conditions.

The research firm Anderson Robbins conducted the survey of voters to gauge feelings on putting any of the three renovation options on a bond issue.

Respondents also reacted favorably to repurposing usable parts of the current school if a new school is built.

The biggest concern for respondents was the use of taxpayer money, Brian Schott noted while presenting the survey results. Schott is the school district’s contracted public relations manager.

“The value that people place in how their dollars are spent is huge,” Schott said. “Through education I think the electorate would come to realize that the school, what we are trying to build here is all about the kids, and that’s what will be important.”

That concern about how public dollars are spent was present in last week’s forum.

David Scott voiced his concern noting that the new Whitefish High School just opened in 2014.

“The timing to try to ask for another new school couldn’t be any worse,” Scott said.

Davis Schmidt said this is not a wants versus needs issue.

“I don’t think there’s ever a good time to go to the taxpayers and say ‘we need something more,’ but I do know that as a superintendent, we have a responsibility to tell the community what our needs are to ensure the best education and the safety for our students,” she said.

Responding to comments that tax dollars are being used to construct a new City Hall building, City Councilor Richard Hildner was quick to point out that the new City Hall isn’t a good comparison.

“City Hall keeps coming up, but City Hall does not burden the city taxpayers because it’s being constructed with tax increment funds,” Hildner said. “The only tax burden is about $850,000 in a special improvement district, which is a very limited downtown area, and that’s a relatively short tax burden itself.”

Responding to the concerns, School Board Chair Shawn Watts advised those in attendance to imagine what level of disarray they’d be willing to deal with in their own lives.

“Think about your work environment, or where you’d pay tuition to go to university. You wouldn’t put up with this in your home,” Watts said. “It’s almost absurd.”

A bond campaign committee is expected to be formed to create an education campaign on Muldown and its needs. A mail-in bond vote could be held in October.

If the levy passes, the school district estimates design of the school would begin immediately and the project would break ground in summer of 2018 with a projected move-in of fall 2019.