With a nearly half-million-dollar shortfall expected in next year’s budget, the Columbia Falls School District has gone way past tightening the belt.

It’s time to resort to surgery, and significant cuts are in the works for the 2010-11 school year.

Those cuts are far from final, but will almost certainly be painful. One option school officials and the board of trustees are considering is shuttering Canyon Elementary in Hungry Horse and busing those students to schools in Columbia Falls.

Superintendent Michael Nicosia said the district spends about $950,000 a year to operate Canyon, a figure that includes everything from utilities to staff salaries. District clerk Dustin Zuffelato estimated the district could save up to 90 percent of that if the building were closed.

If Canyon closed, some staff members likely would move to other schools in the district, Nicosia said.

The district will host public meetings, which have yet to be scheduled, over the next few weeks to discuss why the budget shortfall exists and to get input from community members.

Nicolette Bailes, a first-grade teacher at Canyon Elementary, said it was apparent at the regular school board meeting Monday that trustees don’t like the idea of closing the school.

“It doesn’t come with an easy heart that they would have to make that decision,” said Bailes, who was a student in the school’s very first third-grade class.

Bailes said she and other Canyon teachers who attended Monday’s meeting understand the school district has to find a way to make cuts.

“It’s an incredibly difficult position,” she said.

The board has done everything in its power to keep Canyon Elementary open despite declining enrollment at the school in recent years, Bailes said.

“They do understand it is an important community center. It is really the center of this community,” she said. “It would be very empty without it.”

Canyon Elementary isn’t the only school in the district that has experienced declining enrollment in recent years. Columbia Falls’ overall enrollment has dropped 11 percent over the last decade, according to figures from the Flathead County Superintendent of Schools Office.

As enrollment drops, the funds the district receives from the state decrease. School officials don’t anticipate a turnaround in enrollment any time soon, which means the budgets will continue to get smaller.

Columbia Falls doesn’t expect help from the Legislature, either. About 2 percent of the 2009-2010 budget, which totaled $15.2 million for Columbia Falls’ high school and elementary districts, came from one-time-only federal stimulus money, Zuffelato said. The state will have to come up with that 2 percent for the 2010-11 school year.

“They’re giving more, but we’re getting the same amount,” Zuffelato said.

But the district also has to factor in negotiated pay raises for its staff. The result is a nearly $500,000 deficit in the elementary and high school budgets.

The school board has directed district officials to try to make cuts to make up that deficit so Columbia Falls won’t have to ask voters to approve a levy, Nicosia said.

Any cuts the district makes in the 2010-2011 budget have to be done with following years in mind.

“I don’t think the Legislature looks to be generous to us next time,” Nicosia said. “The serious cuts we’re facing will be multiplied.”

The problem extends beyond Columbia Falls, he added.

“For probably the majority of school districts, the education system will be unrecognizable,” he said.

The district may consider eliminating some elective classes and extracurricular activities. Cutting all electives and activities and only offering core classes is an option Nicosia shies away from.

“You get to a point, if you cut for so long, then all you’re really doing is warehousing kids,” he said.

Just teaching students to memorize facts would be a disservice, Nicosia added. Their education would be incomplete if it didn’t include creativity and higher reasoning skills, he said.

Another cost-saving option could be implementing pay-to-play for athletics, “which I never wanted to see,” Nicosia said.

Other high school districts require students who want to participate in extracurricular sports and activities to pay a participation fee in addition to an activity fee. Some, like Flathead and Glacier high schools, charge a participation fee for each activity. Whitefish students buy an activity ticket and pay a one-time fee that covers a whole year’s participation.

Columbia Falls doesn’t charge a participation fee but students who participate in Montana High School Association-sanctioned activities must buy an activity ticket, high school activities director John Thompson said.

Adding pay-to-play and making cuts in programs won’t make a huge dent in the Columbia Falls budget. About 90 percent of the district’s budget is personnel, which means the district will have to reduce its staff.

“That’s really the only place to make cuts,” Nicosia said. “We will try to be as balanced as we can,” and make cuts in all areas, including programs and all staff, from noncertified staff to administrators.

When the number of staff members declines, the student-teacher ratio will climb. Nicosia anticipates “very large class sizes” in the future that will not meet state accreditation standards.

In the past, meeting those standards — class sizes no larger than 20 to 30 students, depending on grade level — has been a priority for the district, even with its tight budget, Nicosia said. The district has eliminated teachers over the years as enrollment numbers have declined, but Columbia Falls has always put an emphasis on maintaining low student-teacher ratios.

But without money to maintain those ratios, Nicosia said he anticipates a day when school districts will ignore those accreditation standards.

“You get in a situation where those standards mean nothing,” he said. “You only have so  many dollars.”

The picture is grim, and Nicosia said he doesn’t see much hope that the budget situation will improve any time soon.

“I don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel,” he said. “I really believe that our school programs are going to be unrecognizable if we don’t get this turned around — and I just don’t see it turning around.”

He hopes, of course, that his predictions are off base.

“I hope I’m wrong,” he said. “I don’t want to be right on that.”

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or by e-mail at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com