The rumblings of seismic change are emerging from Jefferson High School.
Registered voters in the high school district soon will receive an invitation to participate in a survey that will help inform decisions about the future of the existing school facility in Boulder – and, possibly, a new one.
The survey, and a series of community meetings scheduled for early May, are reactions to a confluence of factors that together have created uncertainty around where the district’s high school students will be educated a decade from now.
Part of the challenge concerns population growth. The county’s northern communities, especially Clancy and Montana City, are growing along with Helena. A 2008 study by NPA Data Services, Inc., forecast that Jefferson County’s population would increase by 59.2% between 2000 and 2030, among the highest growth projections in the state at that time. (In fact, the county’s population has grown somewhat more slowly, by 20.3% since 2000, according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau estimates; see chart at right.)
That spurt could put additional pressure on a school whose student body has grown by 33%, to 268 this year, since 2014-15. “We’re kind of bulging,” Superintendent Tim Norbeck says. “There’s no new manufacturing in the county, and there’s been no mine reopening. It’s just unprecedented growth. We’ve made the place better.”
Some of the expansion has been a function of Jefferson’s High recent success in drawing students from the north-county communities who also can choose to attend Helena high schools, according to Norbeck.
This autumn, however, that source of students will be newly threatened with the phased opening of a new high school in East Helena. That new Class A school is set to welcome ninth-grade students at the existing middle-school campus this year; to open in a new building with freshmen and sophomores in 2020; and to ramp up to full operation by the 2022-23 school year.
East Helena’s proximity to Montana City and Clancy promises to create new competition for Jefferson High, as well as for Helena’s other high schools. The new school, funded with a $29.5 million bond, will be designed to accommodate up to 600 students, according to its website.
“This really is a complex animal,” Norbeck said. “My whole deal is to plan, and I want as much data as possible.”
That’s why the Jefferson High board is seeking input from district residents. In a postcard mailing, voters will be given a link to an online survey and offered the option of completing a paper-based version. The questionnaire, which was developed with SMA Architects, a firm based in Helena and Bozeman that is consulting to the district, will focus on six broad questions:
•What are the biggest challenges facing Jefferson High School?
•What challenges and opportunities does the geography of the district pose?
•What is the future of Jefferson High?
•An assessment of the interior and exterior of existing JHS facilities.
•What factors determine the decisions of district students who don’t attend JHS? How can JHS capture more of those students?
•Does JHS need to expand its facilities to meet current growth projections?
Expansion could mean increasing the capacity of the existing high school, or it could entail construction of a new campus serving the county’s northern communities – or other options.
Following the survey, the JHS district board will host three public meetings to gather additional input. Trustees and school officials are set to meet with residents in Clancy on May 6, Montana City on May 7, and Boulder on May 13. All three meetings are set for 6 p.m.
Data and comments from those meetings, the community survey, and a corresponding survey of school staff, will be available by mid to late June, and will inform strategic planning by the district board, according to Trustee Cami Robson. At this point, she said, there is no timetable for a plan; that timing will be driven by the board.
