Missoula Citizen was told that Franklin School was one of the best built schools in Missoula and did not need to be demolished.

In my conversation with a fellow Missoula citizen I learned that others believe that Franklin School was one of the best built schools in Missoula.

I agree as a family member and I walked around Franklin School before the demolition and found that the foundation of Franklin was in quite good shape. There were a few minor stress fractures, however, these could be easily fixed. Additionally, one of the fractures that was larger than the others was on the older section of the building and was causing a little bit of damage to the bricks above the fracture. This, too, could be fixed without too much trouble or expense.

One of the reasons that a neighbor suggested for the demolition was that a city official had friends in the building industry and that because the city was running out of money for building projects the powers that be decided to use the schools bonding capacity to put his/her building friends to work.

I have no knowledge of this but would not be surprised if this were true.
Edited on 6-13-17

Missoula Citizen: Home Resouces did not get a chance to remove valuable materials from Franklin School befor the demolition.

Missoulians visit with each other about many issues, I was talking today with a fellow Missoulian about the issue of the Franklin School demolition.

Here were a few things she shared with me:

Home Resources on Russell Street was not allowed enough time to remove a lot of valuable materials in Franklin School before its demolition. They were allowed to remove some long beams, however, after the beams were removed the school district did not allow any further removal of items by this recycling of building materials business. Home Resources, as far as I know has a good reputation in Missoula and I cannot think why the school district would not allow them to remove ALL of the valuable and historic materials.

Is Miller Creek the only area of Cold Springs "roots"? What about the 39th Street and the South Hills area?

Growing up in Missoula I attended 5 schools, Lewis and Clark, Lincoln, Paxson, Cold Springs, and Meadow Hill. I attended Cold Springs School in 4th and 5th grade. Our family lived on Virginia Drive off 39th Street. This was in the early 60's. The children at Cold Springs at that time came from the neighborhood around Cold Springs, as in my case, in addition to the Miller Creek area. To say that Cold Springs will return to its roots by relocating to Miller Creek is not totally true. For decades the children in the South Hills area and the 39th Street area attended Cold Springs. What about the children who live in these areas? Are they not important to MCPS? Do they deserve to have their school closed and then have to be bused for miles up Miller Creek? Absolutely not! What needs to happen is for there to be a moratorium on this whole idea of a school up Miller Creek. Obviously MCPS got caught in another facility disaster of their own making. Many Missoulians would be interested to know that when the subdivision was beginning to be built in the Maloney Ranch area the developers wrote a letter to former superintendent Clark and offered the school district 5 acres for a school free of charge. Neither Clark nor another MCPS official took up the offer. And now we are all suffering due to Clark's mismanagement of our school facilities (not only for this fiasco but many others).