The Kalispell public school district will move forward with buying a 25-acre section of land south of town after voters last week gave their overwhelming approval of the acquisition.
The school district board of trustees will meet Nov. 11 to review the results from last week’s election, which saw 6,607 voters support the acquisition — 75 percent — and 2,293 voters reject the measure. The school board is expected to make a motion to move forward with releasing up to $420,000 from the district’s inter-local savings fund to pay for an empty field on Airport Road that could someday be developed into a new elementary school.
“We’re very appreciative in the sense that now we certainly have some significant options in regards to exploring long term how we address the fact that our elementary schools are full and we’re going to have to plan for some sort of school building in the near future,” Kalispell School District Superintendent Mark Flatau said.
Flatau said the district plans to purchase a 25-acre section of land on Airport Road in the next few weeks and then swap it for another adjacent property, which will be more suitable for development.
After the acquisition, the school board will restart discussions about the elementary district’s long-range facility plan, which will include deliberations about a new elementary site. Flatau said the district would engage the public throughout the entire process, as well as administrators and parents at the city’s five elementary schools and business owners in the area.
“We want to solicit the involvement of all the folks who are stakeholders and really involve all of them,” Flatau said. “We just want to take it to the community in a variety of ways and formulate a plan.”
Flatau said there is not a firm deadline in place for making a decision, but it is reasonable to think within three to five years something could emerge on the wide-open property.
“We don’t have a crystal ball of course, and we’re not sure how much we will continue to grow,” he said. “But we know we’re at a point of capacity and we have to make those plans now. It would be poor planning if we didn’t.”
Overall enrollment in the elementary district this fall has surpassed last year’s record amount. There are 2,031 students in kindergarten through fifth grade in Kalispell, 71 more than last year, according to the latest school enrollment data. In the last 10 years, the city’s elementary district has increased by 541 students, according to school data.