Helena voters next month will decide the fate of a more than quarter-billion-dollar public school bond. District officials say their buildings are crumbling, and without new facilities or major improvements, students and teachers could be forced to make painful compromises. Helena Independent Record education reporter Sonny Tapia has been following the story and joined MTPR’s Austin Amestoy with more.
Austin Amestoy Sonny, the district is asking voters for a $283 million bond, and the vast bulk of that is set aside for high schools, the rest would go to the elementary schools, it would be paid out over the next few decades or so. So why such a huge sum of money and why now?
Sonny Tapia First of all, Helena High School, it's nearly 90 years old, and it operates on three boilers for its heating system. Out of those three, one has already completely failed and just does not work. And they have a second one that's on the brink of failing. If that happens, they'd end up going to a split shift between Capital High School kids and Helena High School kids, where they would attend Capital's building, and it would be pretty bad hours. But, you know, that's just one thing.
The school is also built on a swamp so you have heavy flooding in some of the hallways when it rains. That's pretty key things at Helena High. But then you have Capital High School, and educators have said Capital High School has good bones but the interior is what's kind of failing. They'll go through days where all of a sudden the power will just go out. Deferred maintenance is a huge one. That one's sitting at, you know, a little over $110 million right now district wide, and that's just maintenance from, you know, cracks in walls, to holes in ceilings, like at Helena. It differs greatly, but it's very significant, and it's it's a failing district in that sense.
Austin Amestoy So it sounds like there's a range of issues here from buildings that are basically falling apart and need to be replaced entirely, some that need a little bit of TLC to get back up to modern standards and others that have been outgrown, and this bond is really attempting to tackle kind of all of those things in one swoop.
Sonny Tapia It's not going to tackle all of them. It just can't. Because, I mean, that would be a gigantic ask. You know, we're already sitting at above a quarter billion dollars. And, you know, it would be way, way too much. So, no, but they would be impacting Helena High, Capital High and Kessler Elementary, along with some other smaller portions of the district.
Austin Amestoy Sonny, I know administrators have been sounding the alarm, as you mentioned, about a pretty dire future for Helena High School and Capital High School students and teachers if Helena High in particular is not replaced. Could you tell us a little bit more about that split shift they'd be running?
Sonny Tapia So far, the superintendent, Rex Welts, has mentioned to me and also at public meetings that an option for the district – nothing is finalized yet – but an option for the District would be to have Capital kids and Helena High kids share the same building, and Helena High kids or Capital would have to enter in at you know, 6 a.m. and run till noon. And then the next group would come in from noon to 6 p.m And so, you know, that wouldn't just impact the kids and their schedules, but that would also impact the Helena community as a whole in the workforce.
Austin Amestoy Helena, like other cities in Montana, has really soured on school funding requests, in recent years, especially. I know the levy pass rate is way down in the city compared to previous years. Does this bond stand a chance?
Sonny Tapia It's up in the air right now, because, I mean, the elementary bond would be for a 20-year term if passed, and the high school bond would be for a 30-year if passed.
We get a lot of comments from people saying they don't like how their property taxes keep getting raised, and it would be, for $100,000 home, which is really rare to come by, if at all, in this day and age, but it would $87 annually in property taxes extra. But if you jump up to a $500,000 home, you're looking at $472 annually extra in your property taxes, and people are not really happy about that.
So, you have that, but then we have a group called Yes for Helena Schools, and they're big supporters of this bond because they can see the dire need. And it's not that the people voting against it don't see that, it's more that they can't afford it.
Austin Amestoy One last thing for you, Sonny. What's the district saying in response to some of those criticisms levied from the public in terms of their ability to responsibly manage the money that they have? Essentially, how did the district get to this state in which the schools are in need of a lifeboat, essentially?
Sonny Tapia Rex Weltz, the superintendent, he's said before, you know, there is no good time. He said the better time would have been 10 years ago. And so it was just school boards kind of kicking the can down the road, essentially. But now they're taking a stand and that's why they're going out for these bonds to make sure Helena voters kind of know, from their perspective, they're trying.
Austin Amestoy The Helena school bond will be decided in an election on September 9. Ballots are set to be mailed on August 22.
Sonny, thanks for sharing your reporting with us.
Sonny Tapia Absolutely.
