Bill advances to enhance support for school infrastructure

For years, Eureka Public Schools has been trying to stay on top of one critical maintenance issue after another.

Superintendent Joel Graves describes it as a “constant battle,” one characterized by old roofs, outdated electrical systems and corroded pipes. In 2022, Graves recalled, a rainstorm flooded the middle school’s library and two classrooms just days ahead of the start of the fall semester, shutting down a portion of the 100-year-old building well into December.

“We’ve tried to pass a bond to build a new building, but there’s been a lot of opposition,” Graves said in a recent interview with Montana Free Press. “Some people don’t want us to tear down that old building because it is a neat-looking building, but it’s also a very expensive building to maintain. Just the maintenance alone in it is astronomical.”

Twice in the past two months, Graves has tried to engage the Eureka community in public forums about the importance of securing money to renovate its aging elementary and middle school buildings. The meetings come as the district plans to launch its fifth attempt since 2017 at a voted bond for building renovations, which would appear on the November ballot. The total bond request hasn’t been released yet, but Graves’ list of problems in need of fixing runs the gamut, from plumbing plagued by rootballs to failing roofs in need of replacement at the elementary and middle schools.

Similar maintenance concerns are rampant in K-12 schools across Montana, with the American Society of Civil Engineers last year giving the state’s public education infrastructure a D rating and estimating the average age of a Montana school building at 53 years.

Local school officials have sought local buy-in with mixed success. Last month, voters in Glasgow approved a $2.9 million bond for school facility improvements, and in Ennis, board members approved an application on March 12 for a $1.5 million loan to replace the high school’s roof, which Superintendent Jared Moretti told MTFP is leaking in key areas throughout the building. But voters in Hamilton, Park City, Belgrade and elsewhere have rejected school bond efforts in recent years, raising serious questions about the feasibility of tapping local taxpayers for major projects.

The call for assistance has increasingly turned to the Montana Capitol, where lawmakers are advancing legislation targeting the flow of state dollars to school infrastructure needs.

House Bill 515, which hit the House floor April 4, calls for a one-time transfer of $75 million from the General Fund surplus to a special school facilities trust in order to elevate annual interest earnings. Those additional earnings would, in turn, be directed toward increases to several avenues of state assistance including a per-district annual payment for major maintenance needs, which HB 515 would set at $40,000.

“The purpose of that bill is so that our smaller schools won’t have to go out for a levy and put a burden on taxpayers,” bill sponsor Rep. Linda Reksten, R-Polson, told MTFP, “because they can either bank that amount or buy a boiler or windows or even a portion of a roof repair, some of those things that are critical for maintaining their facilities.” HB 515 generated no debate during its first appearance on the House floor, and cleared the chamber April 5 on a bipartisan 73-25 vote.

Montana School Boards Association Executive Director Lance Melton said the proposal builds on work last session to increase the amount generated by the state’s trust fund for major maintenance aid.

That effort, backed by Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte, poured $100 million into the trust and reset the fund’s overall cap at $300 million — a limit HB 515 now seeks to reach. Melton added this session’s bill, coupled with a law passed several sessions ago enabling districts to access loans for major maintenance projects directly through the state Board of Investments, should give school officials multiple pathways to addressing large- and small-scale improvements.

“In a nutshell,” Melton said, “House Bill 515 increases the funding stream [for major maintenance aid] by 50% statewide, it does so with no tax increase whatsoever, and school districts have the ability to spend as they go or to access loans through the Board of Investments, which can allow them to potentially perform major repairs that are 10 to 12 times their annual allocation of funding.”

According to Melton, the state’s last inventory of public school facilities, conducted in 2008, estimated the total statewide cost for needed repairs was $360 million.

For many districts throughout the state, such repairs are now long overdue. The Ennis school board’s loan application arose only after several unsuccessful attempts at voted levies to support a new building or renovations. Even with the loan, the district is seeking voter approval this May on a $7 million building maintenance levy to help cover annual loan payments and other infrastructure costs, and Superintendent Moretti said failure on the ballot this time around could mean deep cuts not just to staff but to extracurricular programs as well. At the same time, he continued, the high school needed a new roof “yesterday,” with leaks exposing critical electrical infrastructure and a brand new gymnasium floor to potential water damage.

“We can’t have water dripping down on part of our major systems or putting those systems in danger,” Moretti said. “But then I think of some of the other consequences or secondary consequences, it’s just not a healthy environment for students to be in with the possibility of mold or other things that come along with having that roof not be in the shape that it needs to be in.”