Dear Families and Staff,

When Helena’s founders sought to transform their community from a rough-and-tumble mining town to a cultured city, they built a school. And not just another one-room, wooden schoolhouse.

In July 1875, they broke ground to build a handsome, multi-story brick facility on the most visible spot in town – the ridge where Central Elementary now stands, overlooking Last Chance Gulch. The “Helena Graded School” was Montana’s first to feature separate classrooms for different grade levels, a high school curriculum and a kindergarten program – it was the model of what education could look like in Montana.

Today, our district continues to set the standard for education in Montana.

Thanks to the professionalism and dedication of our staff, Helena Public Schools consistently ranks among the state’s top performers on the ACT test. Our athletics programs are the pride of our community. We work with community partners in the arts, healthcare, law enforcement, social services and many other sectors to support, inspire and empower our students.

But I don’t need to tell you that our school buildings have fallen behind. While other AA districts have invested in their school buildings and athletic facilities – Butte, Bozeman, Kalispell and Missoula have all built new high schools or upgraded existing schools over the past decade – it’s been decades since Helena has made a significant investment in its high schools.

In the meantime, the district has endured years of financial strain, eroding the model of education our community has come to expect.

As I stated in the press release I shared with our staff earlier this afternoon, we can no longer wait to address issues such as failing school buildings, changing population trends and low teacher pay.

That’s why, over the past three years, our district has worked on a pair of parallel planning initiatives – a Master Facilities Planning process focused on addressing our aging facilities as well as a broader assessment of our district’s future aimed at strengthening the district’s financial health and preserving and restoring high-quality educational programs.

We’re looking at the district’s long-term future around factors such as district boundaries; future funding, including a technology levy; restoring music and P.E. staffing levels that were lost last year; protecting programs from future cuts; maintaining robust benefits for district employees and consolidating resources.

In the near term, at the Board’s next regular meeting on March 11, I plan to share a slate of recommendations that tie into the district’s facilities planning and overall long-term success. While it is my role to make these recommendations, only the Board has the authority to act on them and we don’t expect the recommendations to be voted on at the March 11 meeting.

These recommendations are necessary, and, in fact, urgent, because our district has reached a fork in the road. We must choose to invest in our facilities today or risk expensive emergency actions in the near future.

How did we get to this point?  For decades we’ve taken the best possible care of our buildings at the lowest possible cost to our community to serve generations of Helenans. With limited funding, generations of school board leaders have postponed upgrades to keep taxpayer costs down. We have simply reached the point where we can’t operate that way anymore.

Nowhere is this more evident than at Helena High, whose antique steam heating system is in imminent danger of failure.

As Facilities Director Todd Verrill told the Board of Trustees at their regular work session earlier this week, “this is not hyperbole.”

Billings-based Structural Engineer Jeff Gruizenga, who gave a presentation to Trustees on the HHS heating situation, put it like this: “Your building systems are now 70 years old. They are designed to last 40 years. You’re now at almost twice their expected life expectancy. They are worn out.”

Watch outtakes of Mr. Gruizenga’s presentation here.

The fixes needed to keep the HHS heating system alive for another 10 years would cost up to $475,000, by Gruizenga’s estimates. This would amount to applying taxpayer dollars to “sunk” costs, he said. Sunk, because if the district decides to use the HHS building for another 20 years, it will need to seek a bond for millions for a complete HVAC system replacement.

Meanwhile, the school building itself is decaying as it settles into the swamp beneath it, suffering ongoing water damage from the leaking steam heat system.

In other words, attempts at long-term repair or replacement of the antique steam heat system would amount to throwing good money after bad.

If we take not action, Helena High will become uninhabitable at some point in the next decade, forcing us to consolidate to a single high school building or, again, seek a bond for a complete HVAC replacement.

There is a better path forward for our district.

One of the recommendations I will present at the March 11 Board meeting is a bond to renovate and improve Capital High (which is experiencing outages of its antiquated electrical system), rebuild Helena High and rebuild Kessler Elementary.

Other recommendations to support this strategy and help address the district’s broader budgetary needs will include re-examining district boundaries, sale or lease of existing buildings, seeking a technology levy, potential purchase of land to save on lease expenses and generate revenue, and future uses of Hawthorne Elementary.

While it is my role to make these recommendations, the Board of Trustees is the sole entity with the authority to close a school. Any such action would need to occur at a future, publicly noticed, open meeting following a detailed public process required by Board policy (Policy 8150).

Like our Helena founders almost 150 years ago, our community has the opportunity to make a leap – to give our students the schools they deserve and once again make our facilities the model of public education in Montana.

In the coming weeks, we’ll launch a series of school tours and community forums on the district’s future needs and plans. The first is 6 p.m. on Tuesday evening in the Little Theater at Helena High. Watch for details on additional events to come soon.

I hope you will join us and stay informed and engaged to share our vision with our community. This is a challenging time, but one that is full of opportunity for our Helena Public Schools.

Respectfully,

Rex M. Weltz, Superintendent
Helena Public Schools