State superintendant visits Kalispell for community listening session

Getting more involved in schools was one of the takeaways an audience of parents, school board trustees, teachers and legislators received at a listening session with state Superintendent Elsie Arntzen in Kalispell on Monday.

Arntzen, who oversees the Montana Office of Public Instruction, stood before an audience at Sykes Diner, on Dec. 12 to listen to thoughts and concerns on the state of public education. The meeting primarily consisted of back-and-forth between attendees on a variety of topics such as teacher and administrator pay, unions, teacher tenure and student engagement. The conversation also touched upon enrollment and limiting trustee terms.

Kalispell was one of four stops Arntzen is making in December in preparation for the upcoming legislative session with the goal of “bridging the communication between schools and families.”

Several people who spoke hailed from the Smith Valley, Somers-Lakeside, Kalispell and Whitefish school districts. Legislators in attendance included Republicans Rep.-elect Tanner Smith, who is also a Somers-Lakeside School Board trustee, Sen.-elect John Fuller, Sen. Carl Glimm and Rep. Amy Regier.

One group noticeably absent from the meeting was school administrators. When Arntzen asked how many people in the audience were administrators no hands went up.

“I know we’ve reached out and I listen to them,” Arntzen said in response to the lack of turnout for her visit.

Throughout her tenure, Arntzen said she has advocated for local control. She reminded attendees of that stance toward the middle of the meeting.

“I’m the state superintendent. I honor local control,” Arntzen said of the hundreds of school districts spread across Montana. “They’re all unique and uniquely governed based on who they have within the population of their community as well as those children, but the dollar still flows equivalent down to the districts. So my question to you is, do you want government involved?”

“No’s” rang out from the audience.

“Legislators, did you hear that?” she asked.

That prompted Smith, the Lakeside Republican, to counter: “Well, but yeah, no one wants government involved but there needs to be some oversight —”

“I agree," Arntzen said.

“— getting rid of Common Core and getting rid of, yeah,” Smith finished.

“I think that’s where you as a community member and families really need to talk of the local control with your legislators, getting into those board meetings and talking to the trustees, talking to the teachers because that’s where the governing should be,” Arntzen said.

Smith’s fellow legislator John Fuller worried aloud that U.S. students were falling behind their global counterparts. Education in the American public school system needs a defining moment to change its trajectory, he said.

“Superintendent, I think we need a Sputnik year for public education,” Fuller said. “[Sputnik] revolutionized public education because all of a sudden Johnny was behind and my public education changed dramatically … and I had to take four years of math, four years of science and four years of English as mandatory for high school graduation.”

THAT TRANSITIONED into a quick discussion of whether or not the school day needs to start after 8 a.m. and end after 3 p.m. A couple of parents noted that a later start time, especially for teens, would improve learning.

“So what prohibits out-of-the-box thinking of different school time?” Arntzen asked.

Two people responded: school buses and unions.

“OK, so if there’s an opportunity to do school different … as policymakers that could be something that we could look into, right?” she said.

Schools around the valley have begun conversations around “doing school differently,” or “transformational learning,” which Heidi Burkhalter, a special education teacher at Kalispell Public Schools and a Smith Valley School board trustee, noted.

“Where I teach we have really started to talk about transformational learning,” she said.

“We’ve been talking about different ways to utilize the after [school] hours. How to tie in different subjects [together].”

Burkhalter said that administrators have turned to teachers to come up with ideas on changing things up.

“I have a great administration who is supporting and looking at ways [of] how do we change education away from the factory bell system because that’s not working,” she said.

Burkhalter also addressed parental involvement at school board meetings.

“As parents, you just have to show up every single meeting and be a voice because I do think what has happened from the pandemic is parents kind of woke up,” she said.

But that level of involvement has since subsided, she said.

Just until the next big topic gains national attention, like school security following the Uvalde school shooting, argued Evelyn Cahalen, a Marion resident and retired police captain.

Cahalen urged all residents to be invested in schools and school board meetings whether they are parents or not and see where their taxes are being spent.

“I don’t think schools do a good job of marketing to the general community,” she said.

Cahalen said she attended a Smith Valley and Marion school board meeting in the last three months.

“Each one of those school board meetings had seven or eight people. Why weren’t there 30 people or 40 people there? You don’t have to be parents to go to these school board meetings,” Cahalen said. “Community members here always say, ‘What do they do with all that money, where is the money going?’ These are people who don’t necessarily have children in the schools who will make that argument [that] ‘I don’t have kids in the school, why should I pay these taxes to the school’ because they don’t understand the cost-benefit analysis of it.”

She said schools need more support.

“Teachers have a huge impact on all of us even if we aren’t parents ourselves. I think people forget that,” Cahalen said.

Arntzen agreed.

Tanner Smith, the Republican from Lakeside, worried that school staff constitute one group that is too friendly with school trustees. Earlier in the meeting, Smith argued for busting up teachers unions, claiming some tenured teachers make more than administrators.

Trustees, he said, need to have the gumption to make unpopular decisions such as voting not to renew administrator contracts, a move he made as a school board member.

“Nothing is going to change unless it comes from top down,” he said.

Larry Kossak, a Marine veteran from Kalispell, countered that administrators are paid too much, but that teachers are not paid enough, especially compared with other states.

“Teachers in Montana don’t make any money at all,” he said.

A COUPLE of audience members, including Carrie Nelson, who works at Flathead Valley Community College, asked the group not to vilify public schools, unions, educators and administrators. Acknowledging that educators don’t go into the field for the money, Arntzen said vilification is not the intent behind her series of community meetings.

“What we want is the best education in Montana. We want to honor who is teaching our children. We also want to thank the parents and community for supporting education,” Arntzen said, including trustees and policymakers. “We’ve gotta come together. It’s about our kids. And I think you’re all here for that.”

She also said she wants to “keep politics out of the backpack.”

“Do our children really walk into a school setting … with an ‘R’ on their back or a ‘D’ on their back? Are they political children as they walk in? They’re not,” Arntzen said.

Teachers are adults, she said, and they hold opinions. While confident that most teachers check their politics at the door, Arntzen reiterated the need to focus on education in the classroom.

“I am a Republican and I’m proud of what I am … but I want to keep the politics out of that backpack,” Arntzen said.

Reporter Hilary Matheson may be reached at 748-4431 or hmatheson@dailyinterlake.com.