Cooperating for better schools

Education group helps teachers across the valley

If partnerships are the oil that keeps school gears turning smoothly in the Flathead Valley, the Northwest Montana Educational Cooperative is the oil can.

Midway into its third decade, the cooperative helps more than 500 teachers in 29 schools from 19 districts keep their classrooms vibrant places of learning where instruction is based on well-researched methods.

The bottom line, though, is the 9,000 students in those classes.

"This is really all about those kids," said cooperative director Eliza Sorte. She operates out of what she teasingly calls Suite A, the cooperative's headquarters in the basement of West Valley School.

Sorte, a Wolf Point native who student-taught in Bigfork and later had her own classroom at West Valley School before teaching in Bangladesh and Colorado, has come full circle with her return to the Flathead.

She hired on as the cooperative's new director Aug. 1, building from the broad foundation laid by past director Nancy Crans.

Sorte logged more than 500 miles in August, meeting many of the teachers and principals in rural schools that rely most on the cooperative.

It is a cost-effective resource for tight budgets that hold little room to write and implement curriculum that aligns with state and federal standards, bring in experts for teachers' professional development, coordinate student testing and ease student transitions.

Members represent a diverse mix of schools, from the six-student Pleasant Valley district to the 5,000-student Kalispell districts. Despite diversity, the schools make many common requests of the cooperative.

Often, it's the teachers who know those needs most intimately.

"I'm a teacher at heart. I hope I never lose touch with what's happening in the classroom," Sorte said.

She took stock of the work ahead and drew a deep breath.

"There's individual needs but there's still collective needs," she said. "At the same time that it's daunting, it's very exciting."

It was in the late 1970s or early 1980s that the idea for Northwest Montana Educational Cooperative was birthed.

Mike Welling, now Smith Valley School principal and chairman of the cooperative's executive council, recounted its beginnings.

"Several of us administrators saw kids moving from school to school and finding no real consistency" in their studies, Welling said. "There was also a [push] from the state about then to look at curriculum."

Their solution was the cooperative - which now has aligned benchmarks in every fourth-grade classroom, for example, among member schools across the valley.

Although envisioned as a support for rural elementaries, Welling said the K-12 Whitefish and Bigfork districts joined early on, along with nearly every rural school.

School districts join voluntarily, paying dues based on the numbers of students enrolled. Those dues fuel the cooperative's annual budget of around $100,000.

Membership has fluctuated over the years, but now includes Cayuse Prairie, Creston, Deer Park, Evergreen, Fair-Mont-Egan, Fortine, Helena Flats, Hot Springs, Kalispell, Kila, Marion, Olney-Bissell, Pleasant Valley, Smith Valley, Somers, Swan River, Trego, West Glacier and West Valley.

"We're always open to more schools," Welling said. "The more input we have from more people, the better for all."

Students eventually spill out into a number of different high schools, but each leaves with the same background.

"Our goal is to have kids ready to go to any high school after they are done with elementary," Welling said.

Sorte is working toward that goal.

"With all the mandates coming down the pipe, it's more important now than ever," she said. Results on statewide tests are helping highlight areas where local students are strong and where they need more help, providing one road map for curriculum work.

This year, she said, the cooperative is restructuring to focus on student achievement and teacher instruction - two keys to staying in step with No Child Left Behind.

Committees of teachers and administrators wrote curriculum over the years, with both science and social studies up for review this year. It gives the cooperative a chance to incorporate the state-mandated Indian Education for All curriculum into social studies.

Sorte visits school boards, administrators and teachers, lines up and directs curriculum committee work, arranges professional development sessions, keeps members in touch through a newsletter and Web site - and much more.

The collective budget means each school gets higher-quality input and greater output than what individual district budgets could provide.

"My main goal is to make sure they get the biggest bang for their buck," she said. "I tell them, 'Here's what I can provide. What are your needs?'"

Already, schools have asked for help with vocabulary instruction, English as a second language support, training in classroom management, curriculum mapping and merging the Six Traits of Effective Writing with newer trends offered in Step Up to Writing.

A lot of hard work has gone into the cooperative under previous directors. Sorte is a big fan of capitalizing on those accomplishments while keeping up with current research.

She serves as the conduit for collecting that research, then passing it along to local teachers.

"Education is a big pendulum," she said. "You don't have to reinvent it, you just have to tweak it. Teachers are great at that … Teachers have got to have high expectations, but reality is what can be accomplished."

She plans to provide encouragement to teachers facing that reality, and affordable solutions to school boards wrangling with budget decisions. Parents and classroom aides eventually will be drawn into the mix as she coordinates community liaison work and paraeducator training.

"It's exciting," said Sorte, who likes the flexibility of her new position. "There's no real bar set. I can go as high as I want."

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com