Four vying for three seats in SD6 school board election

School District 6 won’t float a mill levy this spring, but it will have a race for three open board seats.

Four people are running for three seats on the board. Dean Chisholm, Barb Riley, David Shaffer and Keri Hill are all running. Chisholm and Riley are incumbents. Lyle Mitchell isn’t seeking re-election.

Here’s a look at the candidates seeking office:

- Incumbent Dean Chisholm has been an attorney for 25 years — 20 of them in Columbia Falls. He’s been on the school board for 13 years. He and his wife, Penni, have two children currently attending school — Ava and Eddie Mae. Chisholm received his undergraduate degree from Colorado State University and his law degree from the University of Montana Law School.

“We’ve achieved a lot over the last several years,” he said. “There are challenges still ahead. I want to be part of tackling those challenges.”

One of the greatest concerns is the school budget. Also, the nature of the delivery of education is changing, he said, with advances in technology. The school always has funding challenges, he noted and the state budget plays a big role in that formula. The district has seen a decline in enrollment in the high school grades — about 200 students have been lost in the past 10 years — but the elementary schools are seeing a boost in enrollment as more families with young children move into the district.

With state funding tied to enrollment, the district could be seeing a deficit at the high school level, but a boost in elementary funding, he noted.

- Incumbent Barb Riley has been on the school board for 22 years. She is a real estate broker with Pure West/Christie’s International office at Meadow Lake Resort. She said she’s running for re-election “because our work isn’t done.”

She just finished a six-year term on the National School Board Association and is the regional director of the Montana School Board Association. She said she’s worried about the future of public education hitting the school choice movement head-on. While she said she doesn’t oppose charter schools, she said they need to be held accountable and have the same transparency and academic standards as public schools.

“We need to maintain local control,” of schools, she said.

Having said that, students need to be able to compete in a global environment and be prepared for college. With budgets tightening, she said she’d like to see schools have the flexibility to think outside the box. At the high school, for example, she’s like to see some classes — like a senior government class — taught in a lecture hall setting, where the class size would be well above what the classes are now. Students are going to have those type of classes in college, she noted. The concept would also save the district money and free students and faculty to take and teach other programs. But it would also require a waiver from the state, as the class size would exceed current accreditation standards, she noted.

On the budget side, she’d like to see the state legislature allow for more flexibility for districts to raise levies, particularly for capital projects. The junior high, for example, needs a new roof, but the district can’t afford its $250,000 price tag. Right now, the school is capped at what it can ask for in a levy election, she noted.

She said the district needs to “think outside the box,” to be able to deliver more programs with less money.

Riley and her husband Russ, have two grown daughters, both graduates of Columbia Falls. Keyna is a family physician in Colorado and Terin is attending law school in Phoenix.

- David Shaffer was a math teacher at the junior high for 18 years and taught math and physics at the senior high for 12 years before retiring in 2000. He also taught math at FVCC for several years at night and in the summer months. His 10 children, now grown, who graduated from Columbia Falls and after he retired from here he went on to teach in California and Washington, including eight years at Inchelium School District on the Colville Indian Reservation in Northwest Washington. He was born in Great Falls, grew up in Salt Lake City and graduated from the University of Utah. He was drafted for the Vietnam War when he graduated from college, but got a hardship exemption because he already had three children, he said.

He also coached junior high boys and girls basketball when he was in Columbia Falls.

He said he’s running because at age 74, he “has time to help out.”

He said when he taught here Columbia Falls was a conservative school that excelled in math, science and English and it still does today.

“I don’t see that changing,” he said.

He acknowledged math is difficult for many students.

“It takes work. It doesn’t come easy for a lot of people,” he said.

- Keri Hill is a 1997 graduate of Columbia Falls and her three children will be fourth-generation Columbia Falls students. Hill is the wife of Columbia Falls alum and professional bull rider Beau Hill. Her oldest daughter, Lakia, will be a freshman this year. Hill’s younger children attend Deer Park School.

Hill said she’s running for school board because she has a vested interested in the district as her children grow up and attend high school here. She said she looks forward to learning from and carrying on the tradition of excellence of longtime school board members. She noted Riley and board member Larry Wilson were on the school board when she was in high school.

“I look forward to gaining their knowledge and continuing in a positive direction,” she said. “There’s a lot to learn from them.”

She said she didn’t see any large issues facing the district.

But she did note that about 60 percent of the students that attend Deer Park go to Columbia Falls and she’d like to see the two schools cooperate more. For example, the two schools currently don’t compete against each other in sports events. Hill has been active in the Deer Park district, sitting on grant writing committees and teaching there as a paraeducator in the past. She also co-owns a spa in Kalispell.