School board politics needs to go

The Columbia Falls School Board member, Barb Riley, went to the state wide meeting of the Montana School Board Association. When she gave her report I thought she was going to say what their goals were to improve our student’s education and to communicate with parents to reach education goals, etc. Boy, I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The report from Ms. Riley’s meeting with the MTSBA was that mostly “Conservatives,” were in leadership now and the school Board has to keep a close eye on the harm they were going to do to our students. Call our representatives what you will, these are the people we voted in to represent us. We voted them in to protect our children from school board members like Barb Riley. The political bias was so evident it was extremely disturbing. School boardmembers are supposed to be non-political and put education in the forefront before their political views.

Then to make matters worse, Ms. Riley gave a “call to action” to all the principals in the room from Kindergarten through high school to make sure they sent emails or letters to their representatives to make sure our students were not hurt by the “conservatives.”

Here is my “call to action.” Next year Barb Riley comes up for re-election, vote her off the school board. After 25-plus years Barb Riley has lost her ability to make decisions based on the benefit of our children in favor her own political bias.

Thank you,

Judy Territo

Columbia Falls