The Columbia Falls School district has subsisted with budget cuts for more than a decade and school officials say they have reached a point where there’s not much more they can cut.

Trustees want to reverse this trend, not only to maintain current curriculum, but also to ramp up class offerings and remain competitive with area school districts, according to trustees Dean Chisholm, Lyle Mitchell and Larry Wilson.

The three met with Superintendent Michael Nicosia on April 16 to discuss a $478,984 general fund levy request that faces voters on Tuesday.

Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday at Glacier Gateway and Canyon elementary schools and from noon to 8 p.m. at West Glacier Elementary School.

If the levy is approved, the cost for a person who owns a home with a taxable market value of $100,000 would be $17.49 annually. The owner of a home with a $200,000 taxable market value would see a $34.98 yearly tax increase.

“The key thing to me is people’s property taxes will still be less than in 2010 if the levy passes,” Wilson said. “We have been cognizant of tough times here, and we’re hoping things have recovered enough so that people can do this, but whether they have or they haven’t, if we’re going to properly educate our students, this is an amount we desperately need to have.”

Without the extra money from the tax levy, the high school district’s budget will increase by roughly $28,000 or half a percent, according to Nicosia — while costs are expected to rise by $54,241.

Nicosia and the trustees agreed that a disparity between state funding for Class A and Class AA schools accounts for the position the district is in today.

The high school general fund budget has shrunk by $422,613 (7.72 percent) over the past four years as enrollment fell by 12 percent. The school currently has 690 students.

“We are at the point now where a heavy winter is going to be a disaster because of increased costs of energy, plowing and transporting students,” Wilson said.

Despite a decrease in enrollment, the high school still must offer core subjects, Wilson said.

“We have to teach math if we have 30 kids or four,” Wilson said.

Trustees said they have cut for so many years that any more would be detrimental to academic progress.

“We have a number of success stories coming out of Columbia Falls this year,” Chisholm said. “There are a number of areas we’ve done quite a bit without a lot of resources, now we want to be able to use some of these funds to add to existing programs.”

Trustees also recognize the importance of offering a variety of electives and programs.

“When you start cutting programs — that’s very difficult to bring back,” Wilson said. “You know, we’ve cut our industrial arts metals offerings in half and eliminated one teacher and if we eliminated the other there would be no metal shop.”

Trustees would like to not just maintain, but also increase academic opportunities for students attending the high school and Learning Center so that students can be compete in the job market.

“This mill levy encompasses all our kids from at-risk to our most capable college-bound students,” Nicosia said.

Nicosia said about 80 percent of the levy money would be slated for improving opportunities for students. Twenty percent is slated to support current curriculum, personnel, extracurriculars and accommodating inflationary increases.

At the top of school officials’ list is to offer more Advanced Placement and dual-credit courses (courses that earn high school and college credits) and “triad” or multidisciplinary courses.

Nicosia explained what a triad course would look like:

“The one that we use for an example — and that we really want to get off the ground — is our building trades class, utilizing our math class to teach skills necessary in building trades and then using our English department to work with reading skills and language skills that are necessary in support of a profession in the building trades.”  

Other programming priorities include enhancing math tutoring and developing success plans related to academic support for students at risk of dropping out.

Another priority is upgrading computer hardware and software in the high school library, Learning Center and create an additional computer lab to support English, math, Advanced Placement and dual-credit classes.

Facility improvements would be made to the instrumental and vocal music classrooms in addition to the performance theater in the form of new carpeting, sound proofing, storage and stage lighting.

“It’s important to note that this [levy] is not going to be a bucket of money for teachers’ salaries, but teachers know that,” Wilson said.

Mitchell said he thinks the public understands that students today are graduating with a whole new set of standards.

“To be a successful student, they have to have broader skills to enter college and the job market,” Mitchell said. “Even to enter the blue-collar job market takes skill sets of running computers and CAD and math and it’s not what it was 20 years ago.

“As trustees, we’re in charge to supply enough money to educate our students and the mill levy is our resource. We can’t really depend on anyone else.”

The last time the school passed levies was in 2012: $91,544 elementary district levy and an $81,985 high school levy.

Reporter Hilary Matheson may be reached at 758-4431 or by email at hmatheson@dailyinterlake.com.