School District 6 election: Bruce Crockett

Bruce Crockett is a relative newcomer to the Flathead Valley, having lived in Columbia Falls for the past year and a half. Crockett, 34, is the lead pastor of the new Gateway Church in Columbia Falls, which holds its services at the Teakettle community Building on Sundays.

Crockett and his wife, Jessica, have four children, three of them school-aged, and a 3-year-old, who will attend school soon. He has a third grader, a fourth grader at Glacier Gateway Elementary and a seventh grader at the junior high. He also has a foster child.

Jessica is a registered nurse at Kalispell Regional Medical Center.

He said he’s running for school board because he’s interested in the education of his own children.

“My kids have really enjoyed school here,” he said.

Since he moved here from Memphis, Tennessee, he’s become a volunteer with North Valley Search and Rescue, the Columbia Falls Little Guy wrestling program and the youth basketball programs.

He graduated from Blue Mountain College, a small Baptist College in Mississippi, in 2005 with a bachelor’s degree, has a master’s in divinity degree from Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary and a doctorate in ministry from Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary.

He served as a founding board member with Turning Point Pregnancy Center in Scottsboro, Alabama and was a student minister for over 13 years working with junior and high schools prior to coming to Montana.

Crockett said he didn’t have an agenda. He said with the recent cyberthreats and school shootings nationwide, there is a concern about school safety, but he didn’t have fears about dropping his kids off to school in Columbia Falls.

He noted Gateway recently put a buzzer system in its entrance, which restricts people from getting into the building during school hours, which is a good thing, he said.

On arming teachers, he said he’s support it if teachers were willing to go through training that was above and beyond a conceal-carry class.

He said he supported the idea of a community center by the Boys and Girls Club. He said he supported a technology levy, provided it funded needs that would advance a child’s education. But not all kids learn the same.

He noted his own sons learn differently. One can teach himself just by reading, while the other learns through his auditory senses.