By Jason Stuart
Ranger-Review Staff Writer
Faced with declining state funding support, falling enrollment, an ongoing contract battle with the teachers’ union and a superintendent search that has been fraught with setbacks, Glendive Public Schools needed a win in Tuesday’s school election to avoid even more heartache, and local voters delivered the school system that victory, however small it might be in the scheme of the other problems facing it.
Voters somewhat comfortably approved both mill levies the Glendive Unified School Board had placed on the ballot. The GUSB asked voters to approve a mill levy of $124,197 for the elementary district and a levy of $71,735 for the high school district.
Voters passed the elementary district levy by a vote of 1,394 to 915, with the yes votes accounting for 60 percent of the vote. Even with the mill levy passage, the elementary school district will still be faced with a $293,054 budget shortfall due to that declining state funding and increasing costs. However, things would have been much worse if the levy had not passed, as that would have created a budget shortfall of $417,251 for the elementary district.
The levy for the high school district passed by a vote of 1,521 to 1,102, with the yes votes accounting for nearly 58 percent of the vote. Like the elementary district, the high school district will still be faced with a $81,219 budget shortfall for the next year, though it would have been a shortfall of $152,954 had the levy not passed.
Both Superintendent Ross Farber and GUSB chair Jeanne Seifert expressed their relief and gratitude to voters for passing both levies.
“It was a big sigh of relief last night, especially after I watched the Billings news and I saw a lot of the levies there go down,” Seifert said. “I’m very grateful to the voters. Definitely the funding is needed in the schools and it’s just really nice to see the community support the schools.”
“Obviously, we’re very pleased,” Farber said. “That makes our job easier and we’re glad the community has supported the school district.”
Farber added he is also relieved for his school principals, who with the passage of the levies are not faced with the spectre of having to make potentially draconian cuts to their school budgets.
“This is going to relieve their pressure quite a bit, too,” Farber said.
In the only contested school board race in the entire county this year, Cindy Dufner handily defeated Jason Grey Eagle to take a seat on the GUSB, winning by a vote of 1,686 to 479. Dufner will be seated on the board at their monthly meeting next Monday, where she will replace Seifert in representing the Glendive district.
Even with Dufner’s election, the GUSB will end their meeting next Monday with fewer board members than they begin with, as no one ran to replace outgoing board member Mandy Hoffman, who represents the Deer Creek high school district. The board will have to seek somebody to fill that position for the next year until next May’s school election.
The GUSB also has two other vacant seats on its board from rural districts. The seat representing the Lindsay district has remained vacant for years, and there is a newly created ‘at-large’ seat encompassing both the Lindsay and Deer Creek districts.
Any resident from the Deer Creek or Lindsay districts interested in filling one of those seats for the next year can contact Farber at 377-5293.
Reach Jason Stuart at rrreporter@rangerreview.com.