Cramped for space and full of students, Deer Park eyes expansion

Deer Park principal Dan Block doesn’t have to walk far to get a file. The bathroom just outside his office is stacked with them. There’s no room to store them elsewhere, so they sit in a bathtub that hasn’t been used in years.

The small school south of Columbia Falls on Middle Road is one of the oldest in the valley — the original 1880 schoolhouse sits on a hill overlooking the Swan Range. The rope is still attached to the bell in the tower and the children still ring it.

Block’s offices are in the old teacherage — a small building that originally was home to the school’s two teachers.

It has a kitchen, a sink, the aforementioned bathtub and two bedrooms that are now offices.

While this all might sound charming, the reality is Deer Park school needs some help, Block and board vice chairman Gary Anderson note. The old schoolhouse needs work. A quonset hut used for classrooms is 30 years old now and has seen better days.

“The quonset hut looks like an old sway back mare,” Anderson said.

And none of the school’s buildings are secure — a person can enter any one of them at any time.

To address these problems, the district is seeking a $3 million bond to revamp the small campus. The plan is to join the original schoolhouse with the annex to the north and make one school building with one secure entrance. It would preserve the historic look of the school, but modernize the amenities.

The aging quonset hut would be torn down, and they’re hoping someone would be willing to move the historic teacherage off campus to another property.

The small school has grown by leaps and bounds in recent years. It now has 140 students and 20 teachers and other staff. Students come to Deer Park from as far away as Hungry Horse, Block noted. Deer Park serves grades kindergarten through eighth, and is known for its excellence in academics as well as athletics. Students who graduate go to either Columbia Falls or Flathead, though from a tax standpoint, Deer Park is in the Flathead High School District.

This year, they turned away 14 families, Block noted. They didn’t have the room.

If approved, the school expansion would accommodate up to 300 students, Anderson said, and expand the square footage of the school by about 30 percent. The school already has other infrastructure in place — a new water system and septic system will accommodate more students. With the valley growing again, enrollment is expected to rise.

“The build out is expected to absorb the growth for 20 years,” Anderson said.

The bond would cost a homeowner with a house of an assessed value of $200,000 about $300 additional each year.

The school will hold open houses at the gymnasium to discuss the project, one on May 18 from 6 to 8 p.m. and another June 8 at the same time.

The public is invited to attend, tour the school and ask questions. Refreshments will be served.

For more information, visit https://sites.google.com/a/deerparkedu.org/panthers.