POLSON - Voters in Polson backed their school district in a big way on Tuesday passing two bonds at the elementary and high school levels.
Combined, the bonds equal $40 million in funding to drastically improve school buildings, some of which are more than 70 years old.
Funding will go toward renovating and adding on to existing school buildings, bringing school safety up to code, and adding advanced career and technical opportunities.
Polson School District Superintendent Mike Cutler said the bonds passed due to a community-wide effort, talking to voters directly about much-needed school improvements.
“It’s very exciting to be in Polson, Montana right now, if you look at our schools, you know schools drive communities and it’s obvious that our community shares our vision in making things better, safer and more secure and all of those things,” said Cutler.
Cutler said the district will meet with an architect immediately and share design plans with the community as the initial phase begins.
Cutler posted the following letter online following the Tuesday election:
Polson Schools is pleased to announce that both the elementary and high school bond elections passed. We thank the voters for their commitment to making our schools safer, more secure and providing more workforce training for our high school students. Unofficially, the elementary vote was 1935 in favor to 1547 opposed. The high school vote was 2094 in favor and 1798 opposed.
We really appreciate how the community took ownership of our shared vision of making our schools as safe as possible while offering more career and technical training for our high school students.
Now that the voters have spoken, we move into the design phase of what will make our schools safe and secure, and to offer more opportunities for our high school students to be better prepared to join the currently depleted workforce. The design should be completed sometime in February of 2024. When the design is completed the school district will then start the bid process of selecting the general contractor for the project. Breaking ground will follow the bid process sometime in late spring of 2024. Our goal is to have our schools safe, secure, while addressing the capacity issues and job training as soon as possible. We will continue to inform the community about the process and the progress of the project.
Thank you for your continued support of Polson Schools.
Mike Cutler
Superintendent
