Missoula School Election Results: What Voters Decided

Missoula, MT (KGVO-AM News) - The Missoula School Election results were released late Tuesday night, with two out of three MCPS levies passing.

Here are the results;

Two out of Three MCPS Levies Were Approved by Missoula Voters

The General Fund Levy for Missoula Elementary (K-8) GFL passed with 59.05 percent for and 40.48 percent against. The numbers were 10,383 for and 7,118 against.

The General Fund Levy for Missoula High School (grades 9-12) also passed by a 51.39 percent to 48.06 percent margin. The numbers were 14,438 for and 13,501 against.

The third levy, the Reserve Fund for Missoula High School was defeated with 53.08 percent against and 46.10 percent for the levy. The numbers were 14,911 against and 12,952 for.

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The High School Reserve Fund was Voted Down 53.8 to 46.1 Percent

I spoke with MCPS Superintendent Micah Hill on Wednesday for his reaction to the two out of three votes in support for the levies.

“Obviously, we’re really happy with the fact that the two operational levies passed our community, and it just speaks to the value, I think, that Missoula County voters have placed in our education system,” began Superintendent Hill. “I think it just speaks volumes that year after year, they're willing to keep us at 100 percent funding and I’m humbled and grateful because it means a lot to our staff, to our kids, and to our board of trustees as well.”

Hill described an ‘operational levy’.

“Operational levies are what we would consider to be the things that help schools run,” he said. “Usually, 90 percent of our operational budget is salary and benefits, and then the other 10 percent are the things like utilities and internet and curriculum and desks and chairs and markers for the white-erase boards. It's all the things that we do to maintain and operate our schools on a day to day basis.”

Superintendent Micah Hill Was Grateful for the Levies that Passed

Hill said trying to make up for the loss of the safety levy will be a challenge in the coming school year.

“It's a hard one, because safety is always going to be our number one priority,” he said. “Our budgets really weren't set up to account for the safety measures that we have in place; such as having school resource officers, having secure entries, and camera systems and software systems, all the different things that we connect to safety, and so we're having to take money that is in our general fund and use it for those safety items.”

Hill said MCPS staff and officials will have to further prioritize their school spending.

“We go back and we look at our budgets, and it's basically a line item by line item, and we say, ‘okay, safety levy didn't pass’,” he said. “If it had, we would have used those dollars for curriculum purchases, but now we're going to have to go back and say, ‘well, we don't get to buy new textbooks this year, or we aren't going to get a new set of classroom desks’. But there are just things that we're going to have to do. We're going to have to go line item by line item and say, ‘Hey, we aren't going to be able to afford to do that, such as we may have to reduce activity travel, or we may have to do some different things along those lines.”

Other school districts in Missoula County did not fare so well.

Levies for Bonner, Frenchtown and Lolo were all defeated. In Bonner, the vote was 54 to 44 percent against. Frenchtown’s levy failed 55 to 43 percent, and Lolo suffered the worst defeat, failing 68 to 31 percent.

One troubling aspect of the report released by the Missoula County Elections office was the small number of eligible voters sending in their mail-in ballots. Out of 88,908 Missoula County voters, only 30,435 cast their ballots, resulting in only a 34 percent voter turnout.