Just who are the culprits in the Missoula County Public Schools system who have made irresponsible decisions?

In 2004, in just a 48 day period, 3 of our precious neighborhood schools were closed. I guess one could say my life has been radically changed since that day in March.
My third son was to attend Rattlesnake Middle School that fall. Instead, he and his peers on the entire north side of Missoula were bused to Washington Middle School, quite far from their neighborhoods. This practice continues to this day.
Since so many Missoulians have not experienced what I did (and my son and the community of Missoula) I have decided to post the names of the people who have not been held accountable for their actions in 2004 and other years.

Here are some names- Rosemary Harrison




MCPS Board chairwoman - Rosemary Harrison

 









Jenda Cummings (later Jenda Hemphill)
Toni Rehbein

Scott Bixler


Long time MCPS Trustee - Scot Bixler

Joe Toth
Superintendent Clark

and high school trustees
Jim Sadler
Drake Lemm
Debbie Dupree
Diane Beck
(high school trustees did not vote but weighted in on the side of closures)

*Pictures will be added as time permits -

missoula school watchdog 2: Fellow long-time Missoulian - "We used to have mor...

missoula school watchdog 2: Fellow long-time Missoulian - "We used to have mor...: Today I was talking with a long-time Missoula citizen – a fellow baby boomer. As I have mentioned in some of my posts I attended  Missoula ...

Fellow long-time Missoulian - "We used to have more neighborhood schools"

Today I was talking with a long-time Missoula citizen – a fellow baby boomer. As I have mentioned in some of my posts I attended  Missoula schools since 1^st grade (Missoula
did not have kindergarten back then).

 For some reason topic of schools came up. This fellow
Missoulian attended Missoula Catholic Schools. He did, however, notice the local neighborhood schools and had friends in these schools. Fast forward to today. This man also has noticed that now there aren’t many open schools. He remembers that when we were growing up Missoula had many neighborhood schools and with fewer students back then to boot. (Missoula County Public Schools enrollment has dramatically increased in recent years (which, unfortunately and corruptly (is that a word?!) was predicted by a Missoula economist and which was subsequently ignored by school board members and a few superintendents).

Too much administration - I was talking about this topic with another friend and he said that they (school officials) think they have to have so many administrators in each school. His take - Just have the classes there and let the teachers teach. Granted, there are parameters set by the government, however, there can be ways to work around these in my opinion.

Missoula school watchdog - I agree with my fellow long-time Missoulian. And agree with my friend. I think that most people in Missoula also agree with us. We need to re-open our closed schools.We don’t need so many administrators per school. In the “good old days” we basically had one (!) administrator – the principal - per school and his secretary!
We could increase the number of administrative positions slightly - we just don't need so many!

Do you remember that old folk song  we baby boomers listened to sung by Joan Baez - "Where Have All The Flowers Gone?"  Couldn't we substitute flowers for neighborhood schools? Try it! It might be the next hit! (Just kidding but it was worth the thought, right?!)



 

KGVO Talk Back listener comment on raising the bar on school levies and bonds

I listen to KGVO's 1290 am Talk Back program in the morning. This program reaches about 20,000 people according to the hosts, Peter Christian and Jon King.

This morning, May 22, 2017, a caller spoke on the topic of school bond/levies elections. He said that somewhere in California the election must garner about 20-30 percent of the electorate to pass.

The host, Peter, mentioned that the teachers union's are incredibly organized and can get out the vote on behalf of the school district.

A problem arises when the majority of the citizen's view on a bond do not mesh with the school district's/teacher union's views. If a majority of citizen's do not wish a levy to pass there is a problem if not enough citizens vote in order to override the district/teacher union vote.

In general, the teacher union's vote would favor an increase in taxes as their salary is effected by a levy passage. In addition, school administrators put pressure on school staff to vote so that their pet projects get passed.

So, the caller has a good point - to better represent citizen's viewpoints (and their budgets) a state/city would be better served if there was a 20 to 30 percent voter turnout for school levies/bonds.

Jeanne

P.S. Had trouble with sizing of fonts today.

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).