The solution to the Columbia Falls School District’s quarter-million-dollar elementary budget shortfall remains elusive after a public meeting Wednesday night.

About 150 people attended the meeting at Canyon Elementary in Hungry Horse to learn about the district’s budget crisis. Columbia Falls expects a total deficit between $511,400 and $550,400 in 2010-11, with about half of that shortfall coming from the elementary budget.

The district is exploring several options, including closing Canyon Elementary School in Hungry Horse.

That could save the district about $900,000 a year, according to school officials. That would more than cover the deficit and allow the district to stockpile textbooks, technology and other items it would otherwise be unable to buy.

But the potential savings and purchasing power don’t make the option any more attractive to community members afraid of losing their school.

Several community members — some former teachers, some parents, some who don’t have children at the school — spoke out Wednesday against the idea of closing Canyon Elementary.

Many seemed to feel that the district has long treated its Columbia Falls students with more deference than Canyon kids, a suggestion school officials adamantly denied.

Canyon Elementary is the last of several of the district’s schools outside Columbia Falls. Over the years, the district has closed or consolidated schools in Coram, Martin City, Lake Five, Apgar, Nyack, Paola and Summit. West Glacier Elementary is open, but it is no longer part of the Columbia Falls district.

To many, closing Canyon Elementary would just be one more blow to the area.

Marion Foley, a former school board member, pointed out that sending Canyon students to school in Columbia Falls would make it more difficult for parents to be involved in their students’ education, which she called the No. 1 factor for their academic success.

She also predicted that closing Canyon would increase truancy and have a negative impact on the community.

“There are other ways to solve this problem other than shutting this school down,” Foley said.

State Rep. Dee Brown, R-Hungry Horse, who is a former teacher in the Canyon, agreed with Foley. She urged trustees to look closely at the budget and consider what is best for students.

“I’m hearing a lot of talk today about money, but when the Montana Code [MCA 20-6-509] talks about school closure, it says it must be in the best interest of the children involved in the closure,” she said.

Facing a budget deficit is nothing new in Columbia Falls. The district has had to cut its budget for 13 of the last 15 years.

This is largely due to declining enrollment. Enrollment determines how much funding a school district receives from the state, and Columbia Falls’ overall enrollment has dropped 11 percent over the last decade.

The district has 145 fewer kindergarten through fifth-grade students this year than it did in 1996. The bulk of the decline, 121 students, was at Canyon Elementary, Superintendent Michael Nicosia said.

Canyon’s enrollment has dropped from 214 in 1996 to 93 this year. The difference between those numbers is a loss of about $563,500 to the school district, Nicosia said.

“What this enrollment generates for this building is a little bit less than what it costs to run the building,” he said.

That means funding brought in from students who attend Glacier Gateway and Ruder Elementary, the district’s primary schools in Columbia Falls, is used to help run Canyon Elementary, Nicosia explained.

The elementary budget is based on total enrollment, regardless of the number of schools in the district.

“There is no individual allocation for buildings. We just have one pool of money,” Nicosia said. “It doesn’t matter if you have five buildings or one building. The reality is you still have the same amount of money.”

That means the district would still have a quarter-million-dollar shortfall to deal with even if it shuffled students around, Nicosia explained.

Part of the shortfall can be attributed to negotiated staff pay raises. One audience member, Jim Dowling, asked Nicosia why the district didn’t just slash staff and administrative salaries, a suggestion that elicited loud approval from the crowd.

This year, staff received a 1.25 percent salary raise, the lowest increase negotiated in years. The 2010-11 budget is based on the same raise, but negotiations with the teacher’s union haven’t yet been finalized.

Districk clerk Dustin Zuffelato based his budget projections, including the shortfall, on the 1.25 percent raise staff received this year.

A lower percentage would decrease the deficit but wouldn’t eliminate it entirely.

The bulk of school districts’ budgets come from salaries and benefits, so to make up the shortfall, Columbia Falls has little choice but to cut positions.

“One way or another, people are going to lose their jobs,” Nicosia said. “Ninety percent of the budget is personnel.”

Closing Canyon Elementary has the potential to cost five jobs, he said, adding that cuts would be made based on seniority. The district also would simply not fill positions vacated through retirement.

The 93 students at Canyon Elementary could be absorbed into classrooms at schools in Columbia Falls with little expense, Nicosia said.

The district would have to add one full-time teaching position to the staff at those schools, he said. There are enough staff members already at Glacier Gateway and Ruder to keep student-teacher ratios within state accreditation standards.

The same isn’t true at Canyon Elementary, Nicosia said in response to questions from the audience about closing one of the schools in Columbia Falls instead. Several people suggested closing the former junior high building, which houses Glacier Gateway’s fourth- and fifth-graders upstairs and special education, Title I, preschool and counseling rooms downstairs.

Canyon doesn’t have the staff to absorb even the fourth- and fifth-grade students from Glacier Gateway, Nicosia said. The school could take some of them, but it would have add staff members to keep student-teacher ratios within state-mandated limits.

The school also would have to add additional support programs and personnel to accommodate those extra students.

“The difference is those people are not necessary if you go the other way” and send Canyon students to school in Columbia Falls, Nicosia explained. “That’s where the savings is.”

Such a move doesn’t mean staff members at Canyon Elementary would be out of jobs. Most of the teachers there have been there longer than some teachers at Glacier Gateway and Ruder, and therefore have seniority over younger instructors, Nicosia said.

Some audience members asked what would happen if the district closed Canyon Elementary and enrollment climbed again in a few years, pushing Glacier Gateway and Ruder over capacity.

That’s a scenario Nicosia doesn’t expect to see anytime soon, especially with the dismal economy. But he acknowledged that reopening a closed school is extremely difficult and proposed an alternative.

“The ideal situation would be to have primary-level children in this building — K, 1, 2,” Nicosia said. “Then the district is still able to operate within its parameters, and if we begin to have an increase in students, especially in this area, then the natural progression of students is to fill [the school] back up.”

That scenario would alleviate some parents’ concern about busing their young students to school in town, although many worried about third-, fourth- and fifth-graders traveling dangerous icy roads through Bad Rock Canyon.

The district is considering other scenarios to chip away at the elementary budget deficit, including significant staff cuts in the elementary district.

Columbia Falls might be able to eliminate next year’s shortfall by cutting a teaching position at each elementary school, eliminating one of the junior high’s four electives (home economics, art, computers or shop) and getting rid of eight para-educators.

Some people in the crowd favored this option, but Nicosia said it wasn’t an ideal solution, either.

“When I talk to the principals, they tell me we don’t have any extra para-educators,” he said.

That doesn’t mean Nicosia or the school board are advocating closing Canyon Elementary. The superintendent said several times throughout the meeting that he didn’t want to shutter the school.

He also defended the district against suggestions from the audience that the central office favored schools within Columbia Falls.

“In my tenure, Canyon Elementary hasn’t wanted for much. We have taken care of these kids as well as we possibly could,” he said. “There’s no prejudice on my part toward this” school.

Luana Fossler urged Nicosia and the trustees to remember that Canyon taxpayers had been nothing but supportive of the district.

“As well as District Six has treated our children, it would behoove the board to remember it was you, the Canyon people, that passed the last few mill levies,” she said as the crowd applauded.

Nicosia agreed wholeheartedly. But taxpayer support doesn’t change the dilemma the district is facing and likely will continue to face for the next several years.

The district held another public meeting Thursday evening to discuss the deficit and will continue to wrestle with options over the next few months.

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