Deer Park School will hold $3 million mail-in bond vote

Deer Park School will hold a special $3 million mail-in bond election to expand school facilities next month. The small school in rural Columbia Falls on Middle Road has seen a surge in enrollment in recent years and it has aging facilities, including a 30-year-old quonset that used to be a gym and now houses classrooms, but has an ailing roof.

The bond would cost a homeowner with a house of an assessed value of $200,000 about $300 additional each year. Deer Park has 140 students and 20 teachers and other staff. Students come to Deer Park from as far away as Hungry Horse, Principal Dan Block noted earlier this year. Deer Park serves grades kindergarten through eighth, and is known for its excellence in academics as well as athletics. Students who graduate go to either Columbia Falls or Flathead, though from a tax standpoint, Deer Park is in the Flathead High School District.

This year, they turned away 14 families, Block noted. They didn’t have the room.

If approved, the school expansion would accommodate up to 300 students and expand the square footage of the school by about 30 percent. The school already has other infrastructure in place — a new water system and septic system will accommodate more students. With the valley growing again, enrollment is expected to rise.

The build out is expected to absorb the growth for 20 years. The expansion project would join the historic 1880s school house with existing classrooms, making the building a contiguous structure. The old teacherage, which serves as the school’s offices, would be moved.

The school has already had several open houses on the project, but will hold one more on Thursday night at the gym starting at 6 p.m. Ballots will go out on Aug. 30 to registered voters in the district and the election is Sept. 19.