School meeting draws low turnout

A sign-in sheet at the entrance to the

Little Theatre included only 18 names.

The turnout was low Tuesday night for

Libby School Board’s first informational meeting about a February

mail-ballot election that will ask the district’s voters to fund a

$12 million bond issue.

Members of the school board presented

information concerning how the money would provide needed building

upgrades and make a smooth transition from a three-campus district

to two. The board also showed how property owners could learn how

their individual property taxes would be affected if the bond

passes.

Superintendent of Schools Kirby Maki

attributes poor attendance partially to snowy and icy conditions,

and added that more meetings will be scheduled in January.

“It can be disappointing, but we just

need to have more meetings,” he said. “I think as we get closer

into January when the ballots go out people will become much more

interested.”

Excluding members of the press, school

principals and a group that has formed to promote the bond, fewer

than 10 members of the public showed up. The small school district

of Florence held a similar meeting recently that only attracted 12

people, Maki said, so the Libby district is not alone.

Board trustee Lee Disney said he wasn’t

concerned with attendance numbers.

“It’s not uncommon to get a low turnout

and you come to expect it after the years,” he said. “It’s up to us

to get out there and sell the information so that people know what

they’re voting for.”

The board this week has met with staff

at each of the three schools, for example.

“That’s 150 people – that’s not bad,”

Maki said. “We’re making progress.”

In addition, the pro-school bond group

VOTE, an acronym for Value Our Town’s Education, has set up a

website and plans to paper the town with informational flyers.

The main discussion at Tuesday’s

meeting was what voters would get for $12 million and, if the bond

doesn’t pass, what the district’s “Plan B” would be.

The Asa Wood Elementary building will

be decommissioned whether or not the bond passes, the board said.

Plan B is to spend the roughly $1 million currently in the

district’s building fund to perform the bare minimum renovations

and upgrades to get kindergarten through third-grade students in

the current middle school and seventh- and eighth-grade in the high

school.

It would be a hardship, they said, but

the district can’t afford to run three schools. Maki projects a

$450,000 shortfall next school year alone.

Libby High School Principal Rik Rewarts

sent a passionate plea to the public at the end of the board’s

presentation to pass the bond. The high school has no place for

additional students to eat lunch and no commons area for junior

high students to congregate before school starts, he said. He added

that there are only 3-1/2 open classrooms in the building.

“It would be a disservice to those kids

to move them into our building, seven through eight, without the

upgrades that are needed,” he said. “… We may have to do it, and I

understand that, but I hope the voters understand that would be a

real disservice to those kids who have to move in to either

building without doing it right.”

The consolidation will be possible

without the bond, said the district’s consultant Corey Johnson of

CTA Architects Engineers, but space would be tight at both schools

and leave little room for growth.

“With just the $1 million upgrade, by

moving K through six into this facility, we are getting into that

maximum square footage per student,” he said. “When we do the

upgrades for the $12 million scheme, it gives us some elbow room in

there, it doesn’t hit our maximum numbers and it gives us some

flexibility for the future as well.”

If the bond passes, the district would

be able to build an auxiliary gym, a separate wing for junior high

students and a separate loading and unloading area. At the current

middle school, a commons area would be built in between the school

and the detached gym and a new loading and unloading configuration

built. A district kitchen would go into one of the schools and a

warming kitchen into the other.

Board trustee Les Nelson said that if

the bond passes his property taxes would go up roughly $7 per month

or less than a quarter a day.

“Tell me what you could do for two bits

a day that would be more valuable than education,” he said.

The annual cost of the bond is

estimated at $.80 per thousand dollars of assessed value of

property. The taxes on a home with an assessed value of $100,000,

for example, would go up about $80 per year, according to numbers

provided by the school board.