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Muldown Elementary: Should it Stay or Should it Go?

School district, community approaching crucial decision for largest elementary school in Montana

By Dillon Tabish
Arthur Swisher, center, and other second-graders work on a computer coding project at Muldown Elementary School. Greg Lindstrom | Flathead Beacon

WHITEFISH – Lloyd “Mully” Muldown had two great passions in life – skiing and education.

In the 1930s and ‘40s, he was one of the nation’s pioneer downhill skiers and spearheaded the development of Big Mountain resort. At the same time he was envisioning the nascent ski slopes overlooking town, he championed the importance of education in his roles as an active community leader, a teacher and later as the superintendent of public schools in Whitefish.

Muldown gained statewide and national recognition as an educational visionary who helped lead the so-called open classroom movement, which redesigned the traditional one-room schoolhouse model into an expanded learning environment with groups of students working together instead of individually in larger classrooms. After Whitefish incorporated Muldown’s vision, the school district was showcased in films and studied by academics across the country. By the 1970s, the open classroom model was a pillar of the modern American education system.

During his tenure as superintendent, Muldown was the driving force behind the development of a large new elementary school on East Seventh Street. Crews broke ground in 1966, and in the following year students in first through fourth grades moved into the newly completed site, which was later named in honor of its great advocate.

Fifty years later, Muldown Elementary is brimming with students – nearly 670 – and living up to the educational aspirations of its forefathers.

Yet the building itself is showing its age with desperate indicators. The 86,000-square-foot facility’s heating and ventilation system runs on two boilers, both of which are outdated but one that is 60 years old and remains operational through piecemeal maintenance. The roof is structurally failing and leaking, leading staff to set up garbage cans throughout the building that routinely catch water. Winter snowfall forces the school to pay $3,000 each time to have the 50,000-square-foot roof shoveled to prevent caving. Electrical issues, overcrowding and safety concerns, parking and drop-off congestion — the list of problems continues to pile up at the largest elementary school in Montana.

“We have significant challenges and we need significant help to move us forward,” Whitefish Schools Superintendent Heather Davis Schmidt told a crowd gathered at the elementary school on Dec. 1 for a community forum devoted to addressing the issues.

The school district and a task force of staff, community members and planners have been devising a plan to address the future of Muldown Elementary for the last year.

The group has whittled down nearly a dozen options to three possibilities: build a new K-4 elementary site next door to the current facility; significantly upgrade and expand the current site; or simply address the deferred maintenance that is most pressing.

The goal is to deliver a recommendation to the school board by March 21. Any building upgrade would require voter approval of a bond, which could be floated in October 2017.

The option with the most initial support is building a new 84,000-square-foot elementary school, which would cost roughly $21 million and take 30 months to complete.

To cover a 20-year bond worth roughly $20 million to build a new school, property taxes in the Whitefish school district would increase roughly $97 annually for a home with a market value of $239,665, which is the median value in Whitefish, according to the school district.

The new school could accommodate more than 700 students, according to Steve L’Heureux, the private architect who is working on the project for the school district.

The benefit of the new school would be that the former elementary site could be used for other programs, such as early education, or it could be torn down. It would also require the least disruption during construction; students would continue to attend the current Muldown while the new site is developed next door.

The second most popular option is building roughly 35,000 square feet of new space onto the existing school while also addressing the structural issues. This option would cost roughly $16.35 million but require an estimated 45 months to complete.

For the expansion option, property taxes in the school district would increase roughly $72 for a home with a market value of $239,665.

The upgrades and expansion would allow Muldown to accommodate significantly more students and preserve the existing site, but it would lead to sizeable disruption during construction, L’Heureux said.

The new sections would be built first and would house students when the older section of the school is completely gutted and remodeled, L’Heureux said. The school would rearrange the parking and drop-off areas as well as the school’s entrance. A new full-size gym would be added to complement the smaller gym that is currently overcrowded on a regular basis. There would also be new kindergarten classrooms and a multi-purpose room. Future space could be used for early education programs.

The third option would simply address the dire maintenance and structural issues present in Muldown at a cost of roughly $13 million. The building would essentially need to be gutted and renovated, L’Heureux said. The facility could be upgraded to 21st century learning standards in the process. The construction process would require students to use temporary modular classrooms at a nearby site during the 32-month duration. It would cost roughly $500,000 to lease the modular sites for that time span, L’Heureux said.

During the Dec. 1 forum, a resident raised concerns about demolishing or abandoning the current Muldown Elementary, which holds a sentimental value for many in the community.

The school district hopes to gather community input on the three options in the coming weeks and months before recommending one to the school board.

“We want that input to find out whether there is that kind of emotional attachment to this building and the Muldown legacy that goes with it,” L’Heureux said. “We’re not the ones to make that decision. You all are.”

Mike Muldown, the son of Mully Muldown, was asked to speak at the event and offered insight into his father’s dreams and passion for the local schools.

“He was so passionate (about education), almost to a fault,” Muldown said.

Muldown said he and his family are not advocating for any specific option, nor are they opposing any possible changes.

“We all have sentimental attachment to this building, of course, because of who we are,” he said. “There’s not any pushback whatever way you go, at least from our perspective … You have to do what’s best for the students and the faculty and the administrators and the citizens of School District 44.”