West Glacier delays vote on junior high classes

The fate of future seventh- and eighth-graders in the West Glacier School District is still uncertain after a board meeting Tuesday night.

The West Glacier school board on Tuesday tabled a proposal to retain the district's seventh- and eighth-grade students, who currently are "outsourced" to the neighboring Columbia Falls School District. Trustees said they needed more information before they could vote on the proposal.

Principal Cortni King urged the board to make a decision before the end of the school year because it will affect parents who are deciding where to send their children in the fall.

As an elementary district, West Glacier could take students up through eighth grade. But its seventh- and eighth-graders have attended school at Columbia Falls Junior High for years, and many sixth-graders opt to go to school there as well.

Parents at Tuesday's meeting, including King, Trustee Carla Martin and community member Karol Brown, said they would rather their children didn't enter junior high as seventh-graders, when social groups and cliques already had formed the year before. If there is no junior-high program planned for West Glacier, parents likely would send their sixth-grade students to Columbia Falls next fall.

If, however, the district decides to implement a junior-high program, some parents of fifth-graders have said that they will keep their children at West Glacier.

King surveyed the 18 families whose children attend the school, nine of whom live in the district. Eleven families said they would like to see the school add a junior-high program.

Four families said they didn't want the district to retain its seventh and eighth grades, and three families were indifferent.

If the school offered a junior-high program, seven families said they would keep their children at West Glacier for seventh and eighth grades. Two families said they wouldn't keep their kids at the school for junior high and nine families said their decision would depend on the child.

One of the biggest concerns about the proposed junior-high program is the potential social impacts to students.

"Junior high is definitely a coming-of-age thing," King said.

She said that the school would arrange a 'shadow day" at Columbia Falls High School, where most West Glacier students would attend, to give the small-school students a taste of the larger school environment. The district would try to arrange something similar at the junior high if West Glacier's proposal falls through, she said.

Extracurricular opportunities are another concern with the proposal. King met in March with Columbia Falls Superintendent Michael Nicosia to discuss, among other things, chances for West Glacier junior-high students to take part in Columbia Falls activities.

Some large districts, including Kalispell, allow students from feeder schools to participate in activities, but Nicosia said that won't be an option for junior-high students who choose to stay at West Glacier.

"We all make choices," he told the Inter Lake in March. "Currently kids have the opportunity to go to the middle school and participate in activities."

King has said that she will talk to Kalispell Public Schools about West Glacier students participating in extracurricular activities. If the district says no, King said she will talk with other rural districts.

Community members at Tuesday's meeting urged the board to consider alternatives to the junior-high proposal.

Gail Pauley, who represents West Glacier on the Columbia Falls High School board of trustees, said she didn't support it because the district hasn't yet discussed it with the Columbia Falls School Board.

Brown, a West Glacier resident whose children are too young for elementary school, said she needed to see alternative proposals before she could support a decision to implement a junior high at West Glacier.

"I feel, as a parent, that this was presented as our only option: If we don't do this, we'll close," she said.

That isn't the case, school officials say, but adding a junior-high program could significantly help the district's budget. West Glacier would receive about $6,000 per seventh- and eighth-grade student and about $4,700 per kindergarten through sixth-grade student.

The result would be about a 25 percent increase in West Glacier's general fund budget, King told the Inter Lake in March.

The district also would receive the base rate that the state Office of Public Instruction offers middle-school programs. To qualify, at least two junior-high students would have to enroll, a minimum King has said the school will have no trouble meeting.

If the board does not approve a junior-high program or the other major proposal on the table - moving to a four-day week - the school will have to consider other options, King said. Declining enrollment will decrease the funding West Glacier receives from the state, and the school will not be able to maintain the status quo, she said.

"We're really at the point now where if things don't change for us in terms of program numbers … we'll have to be looking at some other modification," King said. "The funding just won't be there."

The board will vote on the junior-high proposal at its May 5 meeting. If it approves the proposal, the first seventh-grade class will start school at West Glacier in fall 2010. The full junior-high program wouldn't be in place until fall 2011.

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