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Solutions sought to address repairs at local schools
The roof at Hacker Middle School leaks. The asphalt pavements at other schools in the Mountain Home School District area are falling apart. Older school buildings still have asbestos in their walls.
But there's just not enough money in the district's budget to deal with all those issues.
Seeking the public's guidance to address those problems, the school district is organizing a committee to gather input on where to spend its limited dollars.
During a meeting Oct. 21, the school board directed the district superintendent to form a committee to look at the maintenance issues at each school. The citizen group would then help determine which repairs should take priority over others.
The board's decision to create the committee comes just hours after heavy rain leaked through the roof at the middle school with water seeping into hallways and several classrooms.
Hacker Principal Lyle Bayley pointed out the damage attributed to the storm. In the sixth grade hallway alone, water was leaking in 11 separate areas with trash cans continuing to catch water dripping from the ceiling more than an hour after the rain ended.
Meanwhile, staff members had placed buckets along a wall in a classroom to keep water from dripping on a row of computers and video monitors. In other rooms, water was dripping down the walls or around ceiling lights.
No additional damage from last week's storm was reported at any of the district's other schools, said district superintendent Tim McMurtrey.
This isn't the first time that roofs in local area schools have leaked and led to water damage. In January 2012, a winter storm dumped heavy snow in the Mountain Home area, which caused similar damage to the middle school as well as West Elementary School once the snow melted.
Like most schools in the district, West and Hacker have flat versus pitched roofs. When the rain and snow falls, the water simply had no place to go.
Since 2012, the district was able to make needed repairs to the roof at West Elementary, but it didn't permanently solve the problem, McMurtrey said.
"We did damage control on which one was the worst, and we chose West and fixed it knowing full well that we're going to have more damage and more deterioration on the roof at Hacker as time goes by," McMurtrey said.
Last year, the district did have enough money to repair the roof at the middle school. However, it ended up using those funds to make urgent repairs to the school's 56-year-old boiler.
If the district held off on those repairs, it could've led to a catastrophic failure, meaning the boiler could've literally exploded, said district maintenance director Bill Magnusson.
"I chose to put heat in the building," McMurtrey said.
The average age of the district's eight original buildings housing schools is nearly 57 years. Bennett Mountain High School is the district's oldest at nearly 87 years old while Mountain Home Junior High School is the newest at 17 years.
To make large-scale repairs to local area schools in the past, the district requested the public's approval of plant facility levies. Voters had continuously approved these levies since the 1950s, failing only once before during thiat time.
In May 2011, however, local voters rejected a five-year plant facility levy of $950,000 per year. When that measure failed, the district ended up having to make do with "bandage fixes" to maintain its buildings, district officials said.
"The plant facility money that we were holding onto for contingencies is gone," McMurtrey said.
A majority of the school district's funding each year is approved by the state legislature. Those dollars are expected to pay for everything ranging from teacher salaries and benefits to books and classroom supplies.
"The state doesn't give you specific money for building repairs," McMurtrey said. "It's discretionary funding which covers everything."
At the same time, the district has restrictions on how it can spend it budget. For example, federal Title 1 funds that address the needs of students from low-income families can't go toward making building repairs.
The same is true for federal funds geared for special needs students.
Since the housing market crash in 2008, the state legislature has decreased the amount of funding they provided to rural school districts like Mountain Home. To make up for this funding shortfall, Mountain Home and other school districts across the state have relied on supplemental levies to, in essence, keep the lights on in local area schools.
In comparison, the Boise School District doesn't have these problems because it's listed as a separate charter district, meaning it can impose a levy without having to get the approval of taxpayers, McMurtrey said. This is why schools in Boise have newer facilities and roofs that don't leak.
In comparison, rural districts like Mountain Home rely on taxpayers to make up the shortfall in funding.
"The state legislature will cry the banter of 'local control,' so this is a local control issue to them," McMurtrey said regarding the school funding issue.
Mountain Home isn't alone when it comes to limited funding, McMurtrey said. Rural school districts in communities like Wendell, Challis and Salmon also requested supplemental levies to help with their budget issues, but voters in these committees shot them down.
However, the district superintendent did add that state lawmakers provided districts with a small increase last year. At that time, legislators gave assurances to school districts across the state that those funds would continue to increase.
"But until they do that, we are still back where we were when the economy tanked," McMurtrey said.
There was at least one school that saw some improvements when the academic year began in August. Stephenson Elementary School at Mountain Home Air Force Base was repainted over the summer only because the district was able to secure a grant to cover most of the expenses.
Volunteers from the base did the actual work, McMurtrey emphasized.
The superintendent understands that the district can only ask so much from local taxpayers.
"It comes to a point where you can't keep asking the community, 'gimmie, gimmie, gimmie,' " he said.
In a worst-case scenario, McMurtrey said the district could resort to more drastic measures that include cancelling high school sports programs. However, he doesn't see the school board approving that type of measure.
For now, the district has limited its repairs to address immediate safety issues in each building. A 10-year plan that prioritized repairs at each building was put on hold due to a lack of funding.
"From a district point of view, we put out the big fires that we can do," he said.
This is why the district was directed to put together a committee to address current and future repairs at each school. The district plans to invite members of parent groups at each school or members of the local booster clubs to be a part of this committee.
"You have to get a group of people together with a vested interest in solving the problem," McMurtrey said.
The committee is expected to look at the issues at each school to develop a plan that will prioritize repairs and additional maintenance. Among its priorities, the committee will address the situation with the roof at Hacker.
It's possible this group could recommend a less-expensive patch job that might last a couple of years. They could also suggest more extensive but more costly repairs that would extend the life of the roof a few additional years in hopes the economy will improve to make more permanent repairs down the road.
If they concur, the committee could also urge the district go for a bond that would pay for a pitched roof at the middle school "and solve the problem once and for all," McMurtrey said.
The superintendent said he will support whatever decision this committee makes. "If the community says, 'we don't want a new roof,' then OK. We'll keep putting the buckets out at Hacker," McMurtrey said