WHITEFISH — The Whitefish School District hosted a community engagement meeting on Monday night to provide information and answer questions regarding two upcoming bonds.
“These bonds are working to address those number of students over the next 15, 20 years,” said Whitefish School District Superintendent Dave Means.
Means said the school district is trying to pass two separate bonds for high school building expansion and athletic improvements. This comes after voters rejected a $33.7 million bond last fall.
If approved the high school building expansion bond would add more classrooms and improve school safety and security. The athletic improvements bond would add a new 10-lane track, a new district-owned football field and more.
The estimated cost of the building expansion is $26.5 million, and the athletic improvements are $6.1 million. The estimated taxpayer impact of both bonds is $111.25 per year for a property with a taxable value of $600,000.
Means said annual student enrollment at Whitefish High School is outpacing the current facilities.
“Really at the high school level we have a 2.74% increase over the past 10 years (annually), if we take that out further, in 10 years from now we would be over 800 students in our school," Means told MTN. "Already we’re beyond capacity, our designed capacity for our current high school is 600 students and now we’re looking at that going up even further as we continue into the next few years."
Ballots will be mailed out on August 28 with votes due by September 17. More information on the two bonds can be found here.
