COLUMBIA FALLS — Perched atop a hill near the base of a forested mountain range to the east, a classic bell tower and former one-room schoolhouse sits prominently at the center of this rural setting.
Deer Park School is the oldest active elementary school in the county, dating back to the 1880s. It was the second school district to form in the valley, behind only Demersville, which is no longer in existence.
The first schoolhouse, a log cabin, was built in 1886. In the early 1920s, a new site with a bell tower was built atop a nearby hill.
Today that same building has undergone nearly 100 years of wear and tear, and generations of paint jobs, but it still bustles with students.
Deer Park has expanded over the decades, including a newer building and gym next door to the old schoolhouse, but years of deferred maintenance have stacked up, particularly within the old Quonset hut built in the 1960s as a gym and now portioned into classrooms.
Overcrowding is also an issue. In 2008, there were 53 students in kindergarten through eighth grade. Last year the enrollment hit 141, the most on record.
Faced with the challenges of operating an old, overcrowded facility, the Deer Park School District No. 2 Board of Trustees is seeking a $3 million general obligation bond. The last bond request was in 1999 for the newer gym, and that 15-year bond has been paid off and the district is debt-free.
The mail-in ballot election for district residents is Sept. 19. To cover the 20-year bond, property taxes would increase roughly $315 annually on a home with a taxable value of $200,000, according to school officials.
The district has also set up a GoFundMe.com fundraiser — www.gofundme.com/school-structure-and-security — aiming to independently gather donations from school supporters.
“We’re trying to show the community we’re doing everything we can,” said Dan Block, the school’s principal and seventh- and eighth-grade math teacher.
The list of issues is long. The Quonset hut is more than 50 years old and is falling apart, quite literally. In the winter, the roof sags in many areas and leaks in others. Since the buildings are separated, it requires 11 furnaces, many that are several years old, to heat the school in winter. One class last year was situated inside the former copy room. The small office bathroom is also home to boxes of paperwork and other supplies climbing to the ceiling. Security and safety issues also abound, according to Block, who has been at Deer Park for 23 years.
“In the last few years, we’ve been doing upgrades and trying to do anything we can,” said Gary Anderson, a longtime school board member and graduate whose family goes back four generations in the Deer Park district.
“Every time we find any funds we can use for upgrades, we do.”
The goal would be to tear down the Quonset hut and connect the two existing facilities. The newer site would become a two-story school, while the classic schoolhouse would remain intact but receive a much-needed renovation of its foundation. Other basic needs, such as electrical and plumbing, would be addressed, Block said.
“It’s the focal point in the community,” Block said of the school.
For Anderson, it’s also the lifeblood.
“We keep our gym open to the community at no charge,” he said. “There’s lots of families that do different events here, like birthday parties.”
He continued, “We all have a responsibility to bring up the youngsters and teach them the best we can.”
A public meeting about the proposed bond request is scheduled for June 28 at 6 p.m. at the Deer Park school. For more information, visit http://www.deerpark.k12.mt.us.