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?!)