A committee of staff, planners and residents is recommending that Whitefish build a new elementary school while repurposing a portion of the existing Muldown Elementary for future education programs.
Last week, the Whitefish school board received a final recommendation from a group that has met for more than a year to address mounting maintenance issues and overcrowding at Muldown. The committee reviewed nearly a dozen options for Montana’s largest elementary school, which is bursting at the seams with nearly 670 students in kindergarten through fourth grade and showing significant wear and tear after 50 years.
The committee is recommending a $26.5 million option that would build a new facility next door to Muldown while renovating part of the existing school, which would be closed but available for possible future use. The original part of Muldown, which is plagued by deferred maintenance, would be demolished. It would take an estimated 30 months to construct the new building.
“It would be so costly to repair it that the committee felt it wasn’t a good use of tax dollars,” Whitefish School Superintendent Heather Davis Schmidt said.
The school board is slated to review the recommendation at its May 9 meeting. At that time, board members can take action and possibly move forward with a bond request that would require voter approval. The potential bond election would be in early October.
At Whitefish’s only public elementary school, the heating and ventilation system runs on two boilers, both of which are outdated, including one that is 60 years old and remains operational through piecemeal maintenance.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, according to school officials.
Over the last eight months, architects and engineers from L’Heureux Page Werner have been working with teachers, parents, community members, support staff, administrators, and trustees on the Muldown Project Task Force to review options to fix these issues. Committee members also researched ways to enhance innovative learning and reduce overcrowding.
“We have carefully considered how we can best maximize tax dollars from the community’s perspective,” Davis Schmidt said.
“It’s an important investment in the community, but we recognize that we want to keep that investment as low a cost to the taxpayers as best we can while also meeting our needs.”
The final options weighed by the committee centered on building a new facility, and there was debate over how large the site should be. One option, costing roughly $22 million, would accommodate around 688 students. The second, larger option, costing roughly $26 million, would accommodate an estimated 756 students, which would meet projected enrollment gains in the next 20 years.
As part of the bond request, roughly $500,000 would go toward repurposing part of Muldown to allow for future programs, such as a possible early education center, Davis Schmidt said.
“After digging into the analysis and understanding the severity of concerns and how much it will actually cost, the committee came to the conclusion that this will be best value to the community,” she said.