'An accountant at heart'

By KRISTI ALBERTSON

Reisch keeps tabs on Whitefish School District books

The Daily Inter Lake

Long before she ever considered working for a school district, Danelle Reisch thought a job as district clerk might be fun.

"I thought school clerk was a job that would be kind of cool to have," she said.

Granted, Reisch - then a clerk at the Whitefish Pilot - had no idea what a school clerk did, other than drop off legal advertisements at the newspaper. Now a 14-year veteran Whitefish School District employee, she knows there is a lot more to the clerk position than making sure legal notices are published.

Reisch develops and manages the district's $15 million budget. She oversees payroll for the district's 216 employees. She serves as clerk and record keeper to the school board and puts financial statements together.

The latter, she said, is her favorite part of the job.

"That's the part I really like," she said. "I'm an accountant at heart. I don't get to do a whole lot of accounting in this job; that's the part where I get to do accounting."

Reisch has been a certified public accountant since the late 1980s, when she graduated from the University of Montana. After graduation, she spent a few years working in Billings for the state Department of Commerce, then took a job as the Missoula School District accountant.

"That's how I got into schools," she said.

She was there just a couple of years when the district clerk position opened in Whitefish.

"When the job came open here, I fought for it," she said. "It was a chance to come back home."

REISCH ATTENDED ninth grade at what was then Central School and finished school at Whitefish High School in 1975. Before moving to Whitefish, she attended schools in Choteau and Great Falls - but Whitefish was home.

Today's town is vastly different from the railroad town she used to know, but it's still a good place to live, she said. One of its biggest benefits is "an incredibly supportive community, which makes things a lot easier" on the schools, she said.

It helps to have a supportive community this time of year, which is one of the busiest for district clerks who are preparing for school elections. Reisch oversees Whitefish's school elections. This spring, that includes two levy requests totaling $111,133 and five candidates vying for three open positions on the board of trustees.

Reisch also is working on the district's 2008-09 budget and is ordering supplies for next year. The goal, she said, is getting the most bang for the district's buck to provide students the best possible education.

"That's the bottom line," she said. "We're here to educate kids."

Sometimes, Reisch said, administrators can forget about the ultimate reason they're in the business. In Whitefish, administrators were forcibly reminded of their real purpose during the remodel of the district offices in the Whitefish Middle School basement.

During the two-year project, which included extensive work on the middle school, administrative offices were located in Muldown Elementary School.

"It was really nice to be that close to the kids," Reisch said. "It's pretty easy for us to be isolated from that."

It was even nicer for Reisch to go to work in the same building where her son, Spenser Eaton, now a fourth-grader, attended school.

Working out of Muldown helped administrators see what teachers experience every day, she said.

"It was good for us to be there and find out what it's like to deal with all those kids," she said.

Reisch said her job is the perfect combination of professional work and service.

"It is business-related, and I can use my degree," she said. "But I feel like I'm doing something valuable and important. Schools are important.

"It's something I can feel really good about. It's nice to be a part of that."

Reporter Kristi Albertson may be reached at 758-4438 or by e-mail at kalbertson@dailyinterlake.com