School building inadequate for future challenges

The time has come for my fellow Whitefishians in School District 44 to mark their X in the yay or nay box on the ballot for the Muldown Elementary bond to build a new school. Please don’t take this exercise lightly. The $26.5 million price tag can certainly get one’s attention, but I would encourage everyone to dig deeper and get “the rest of the story” in order to make an informed decision.

A good place to begin is the Sept. 13, 2017 edition of the Whitefish Pilot where you can read about the almost two-year process by the Project Muldown Task Force -— made up of community members, trustees, Muldown staff, architects, engineers and builders. I attended the community forum this past winter where the three options were discussed and displayed in detain.

I came away impressed with the collaborative efforts of all involved, as well as the passion for the legacy of excellence in education in the Whitefish Public Schools and Muldown Elementary in particular. At the end of the process this spring, the task force came to the conclusion that the old school has serious structural and mechanical issues with prohibitive costly remedies and it makes the most fiscal sense to build the new school while saving the functional parts of the 1992 remodeled structure.

I remained a bit skeptical until I drew up my own trusty old Ben Franklin pros and cons list (Google it) and went to work. The pros won in a landslide. The only real con was the price, which could probably be viewed as a pro when compared to the alternatives and the continually escalating cost of building materials, etc.

At the end of the day I hope you join me in No. 1: Getting better informed and No. 2: creating your own pros and cons list before dropping that final X on the ballot. I believe you may come to the same bottom line conclusion I did — that a Yes vote for the new school bond NOW will be more cost effective than the ultimately, more costly, Band-Aid remodel approach if the can is kicked down the road.

The old school has served the children, faculty, and the citizens of Whitefish well over the last 50 years, but is woefully inadequate to face the challenges of the future. The new school’s design will better be able to adapt to changing concepts and the space needed for an expanding enrollment, and it might just take us into the next century.

Mike Muldown, Whitefish