Fewer junior high kids in summer school this year
End of year reports from all campus were heard by the School District 6 board last week as they held their regular monthly meeting Tuesday evening.
Chief among the district’s accomplishments listed at the meeting was that there will be only nine students in need of summer school from the junior high this year, a number well below the school’s usual average.
“That’s almost not worth it for the pay that we have to give those people, but we tell them they are going to have the job, they are counting on the job. Our interventions are working well,” board member Dean Chisholm said.
The report stated that 12 students were recommended for summer school, but one is moving out of the district, one opted for retention and one is protesting the decision.
In other news:
- Robyn Kehr led the Ruder School Jump Rope for Heart effort as the campus raised $8,449 for the American Heart Association. Ruder ranked sixth among all schools that participated in Washington, Idaho and Montana.
Two bicycles were also given away at Ruder to students that had perfect attendance for the year.
The junior high set a new record with nine students with perfect attendance for the 2017-18 school year, with Brayden Hallett winning a raffle among those nine students to earn a new bicycle.
Ilah McKenzie and Paeden Matson also broke the school’s all time advanced reading score of 1,200 points.
- High school principal Scott Gaiser reported that the Class of 2018 earned more than $3 million in scholarships, well above the school’s 22-year average of $1.89 million. He also congratulated seniors Ashley Dierenfield and Jessica Sasser for each completing a 5-credit college course and passing their exams to become certified nurses aides in Montana. Sasser also completed her Health Occupations Certificate from FVCC and walked in their graduation ceremony before graduating from Columbia Falls.
Gaiser also congratulated the 2018 inductees into the Wildcat Athletic Hall of Fame, which includes Danielle Douglas, Hannah Gedlaman, Austin Green, Ben Windauer, Logan Kolodejchuk, Hayden Falkner and Dumay Award winner Gabe Knudsen.
- After watching an informational video from Montana School Board Association Executive Director Lance Melton on resources available to help assist Montana schools, the board got into a lively discussion about the role of the state in funding local school districts.
“The state has strangled us. We didn’t need the permissive levies to handle special education when the state paid for it. That can be said of a lot of things,” Chisholm told the board. “It’s the state’s responsibility to fund the school districts, not the state’s responsibility to turn its back on local school districts and force them to have local taxpayers pick up the difference.”
Larry Wilson disagreed.
“I think there are some things that the state has failed to do and certainly some things that the school board association has failed to do in dealing with this issue. However, in the real world that we are in, some of those permissive levies are ways that we can maneuver through the financial mess that the state has left for us,” he responded.
Michael Nicosia summed up the board’s fears about state funding, “I fear that flexibility is now the word for ‘I don’t want to fund schools with state money.’”
Columbia Falls School District 6 is currently 40 percent funded by local taxpayer money, 5 percent below the national average, according to Superintendent Steve Bradshaw.
In other action, the board approved a student fee increase from $200 to $225 for driver’s education participation beginning next school year.