MISSOULA, Mont. — Montana recently received a rough infrastructure report card from the American Society of Civil Engineers – earning a C- grade. One of the areas Montana struggles with most is school infrastructure.
“Poor, At Risk”, that’s how a recent report rates Montana’s school infrastructure, earning the category a “D” grade.
Dustin Hover is one of the project managers behind the school section of the 2024 infrastructure review. Few facilities in the state have plans on updating and maintaining this infrastructure, Hover told NBC Montana.
“We’ve got highly qualified individuals ruining our schools, but that doesn’t mean that they’re necessarily qualified, informed, anything like that relative to the infrastructure – your heating and cooling systems, your exterior, your roof,” Hover, who’s with Missoula’s WGM Group, said.
A better job can be done to prepare facility assessment reports to help school officials.
Hover pointed out the average age of school facilities in Montana is 53 years old, with more than 2/3 of the schools built before 1970.
A major part of all this is funding, Hover told NBC Montana.
“Really what it comes down to is the state needs a new funding mechanism for schools as a whole,” he said. “Federal provides a certain amount of funding, state provides a certain amount of funding. That still leaves pretty much every school out there short, some amount of funding.”
Both immediate and long-term changes are needed, Hover said. He is in favor of a short-term measure being floated, which would see counties assess levies instead of individual counties.
“So your lower income districts get more money, higher income districts, which there’s very few of those, get a little bit less money, and it equalizes that better,” Hover said. “The net effect is a lower levy amount for all the taxpayers across the county.”
NBC Montana will continue following this story into the upcoming legislative session.