New gym would open up opportunities
HILARY MATHESON | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 8 years, 1 month AGO
<p>View of the gym at Elrod Elementary. The walls are lined with tables that fold up because the gym serves multiple duties as activities room, gym and lunchroom. (Brenda Ahearn/Daily Inter Lake)</p>
<p>Glenda Armstrong pulls back the dirty curtain that used to be used for stage productions at Elrod Elementary on Wednesday afternoon, September 14. The space behind the curtain was walled in to create a narrow storage area and the stage became the music room. The wall was necessary because the stage faces the gym and the noise between the two competing classes would have made hearing teachers instructions extremely difficult. (Brenda Ahearn/Daily Inter Lake)</p>
<p>If the bond goes through one of the changes to Elrod would be with this classroom space having its wall taken out and the entire area transformed into a commons area. (Brenda Ahearn/Daily Inter Lake)</p>
<p>The music room at Elrod has taken over the stage to give students a space for music class, but has eliminated the area for performances. (Brenda Ahearn/Daily Inter Lake)</p>
(EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the final article in a series profiling schools that would be affected by a Kalispell Public Schools elementary bond request. Ballots are due Oct. 4.)
Built in 1951, Elrod Elementary may be the only Kalispell school that hasn’t had any significant remodeling or upgrades since opening its doors.
Glacier High School and the H.E. Robinson Agriculture Center are the others, but both were built much later — Glacier in 2007 and the vo-ag center in 1978.
Elrod may get some upgrades if a $25.3 million elementary district bond issue passes. In that event, Elrod would have a new gym built that also would serve as a multipurpose room.
“The gymnasium will open up our educational schedule — the daily functioning of the schedule,” Elrod Principal Glenda Armstrong said during a tour of the building on Sept. 13. “Right now my gym is a multipurpose room, a gym and a lunchroom. All my assemblies are in there, so what ends up happening — we have to cancel P.E. in order to have an assembly.”
The issues Armstrong listed are familiar ones plaguing the district’s four other elementary schools — overcrowding and deferred maintenance. There aren’t meeting places for staff or students. There are windows that need to be replaced, the roof is leaky and temperature and ventilation are problems.
Armstrong noted that during the previous week the sewer system backed up from underground debris. As a backup plan, portable toilets were brought in, but the issue was resolved quickly.
“We didn’t end up having to use them” Armstrong said. “The plumbers were here the very next morning.”
As with Russell Elementary, a wall has been put up on the Elrod stage, initially to serve as the staff lounge. It became the music room when the music room was needed as a regular classroom. The wall, however, doesn’t abut the stage. There is an odd wedge of space between the curtain and the wall currently used for storage.
“This wall’s the barrier so you can still have P.E. going on and you can still have music,” Armstrong said.
Anywhere from 27 to 30 students at a time are packed onto risers for music class. On one side of the room, a portable air conditioner is sandwiched between a piano and the risers. In front of the risers, shelves contain xylophones and other instruments.
“That’s been the challenge,” music teacher Amanda Sienknecht said about using instruments or moving around in a small classroom.
“We all worked really hard to make it accommodating, as you can see, things like bringing in a portable air conditioner because it gets hot back here. We push the piano back to use it. Kids have to scoot back if they want to use instruments because when the kids get in here, it’s pretty squished, but we make it work.”
If the bond request passes, the hope is that P.E. class will be held in the new gym and the stage wall will be taken down. The plan is to make the stage wheelchair-accessible. Currently a small set of stairs leads up to it.
With an enrollment of about 290 students, the school is overcrowded by 20 students. Elrod doesn’t have closets, hallways or space to spare.
“I don’t have those spaces to create them or I probably would have,” Armstrong said.
In addition to Elrod, Edgerton, Hedges, Peterson and Russell elementary schools are slated for renovation if the bond issue is approved.
Deferred maintenance only would be completed at Kalispell Middle School. A new elementary school would be built on Airport Road, and as a result, redistricting would occur to allow more students to attend their neighborhood schools, which is currently not the case due to overcrowding.
If the $25.3 million elementary bond request is approved, owners of homes with assessed values of $200,000 could anticipate a property tax increase of $116.82. This annual amount may decrease over time if the population grows and the tax burden is spread among more people. The bonds would be for 20 years.
Only residents of the Kalispell Public Schools elementary district (not people who live in rural outlying districts) may vote on the elementary district bond issue.
Residents of the elementary district also will vote on a $28.8 million high school district bond request. That would add another $58.46 in annual taxes on a $200,000 home.
If both bond issues pass, elementary residents could see a total annual property tax increase of $175.28.
Hilary Matheson is a reporter for the Daily Inter Lake. She may be reached at 758-4431 or hmatheson@dailyinterlake.com.