Making the grade — Kalispell Public Schools leader named regional superintendent of the year

Kalispell Public Schools Superintendent Matt Jensen has been named regional Superintendent of the Year by the Northwest Montana Association of School Superintendents.

The recognition comes as Jensen finishes his second school year leading the Flathead Valley’s largest school district, where he has pushed initiatives in work-based learning, personalized instruction and school funding advocacy.

Jensen was nominated and selected for the distinction by his peers. The award recognizes outstanding superintendents who “work successfully with their entire learning communities to provide the highest quality education that is possible,” according to the association. 

In announcing the award, Northwest Montana Association of School Superintendents President Laurie Barron pointed to Jensen’s work with staff, community partnerships and student outcomes.

“His vision and leadership in forging new pathways in Personalized Competency-Based Education have created meaningful learning experiences for students, while his ongoing support of colleagues and tireless advocacy for public education have strengthened the entire educational community,” Barron said. 

Jensen previously received the regional honor while serving as superintendent of Bigfork School District, a position he held for seven years. Jensen will now be considered among the superintendents selected in nine regions for the Montana Superintendent of the Year. 

“It’s always so humbling to get recognized by your peers,” Jensen said. “I’m grateful for their friendship and the relationships I have with them as colleagues, and I respect the work they do, and so for them to vote for that is very humbling.”

 JENSEN JOINED Kalispell Public Schools in 2021 as an assistant superintendent before being promoted to superintendent in 2024. 

A Flathead High School graduate, Jensen started his career in education teaching history, government and economics at Bigfork High School. After three years, he was approached about filling an open administrative position for a year.  

“I said, sure, I’ll take it for a year and then I ended up just staying in administration,” Jensen said. “I was planning on staying in the classroom for quite a bit longer.” 

He went on to serve as assistant principal and athletic director, then principal of Bigfork High School, before moving to the elementary and middle school principal position. In 2014, he was promoted to superintendent of Bigfork School District. 

Starting out as an assistant superintendent at Kalispell Public Schools gave Jensen insight into the district’s own budget and facility challenges, along with its academic initiatives, before stepping into the district’s top role. 

Jensen said the district continues advancing academic initiatives, including personalized, competency-based education and work-based learning. 

“If you look at just the internships at the high school and how that plays, that was a goal several years ago of kind of mainstreaming the idea of getting kids plugged into the workforce and getting these real-world experiences, getting credit for it and making that connection to the classroom,” he said. 

According to Jensen, high school internships have expanded from about 30 students in the program’s early years to 450, with students starting that career exploration pathway in elementary school. 

“I think that real-world experience is great for those students, and it’s also really good for our community to see that we have some amazing kids, some amazing high school students that are capable of some really high-end work,” Jensen said. “They’re interning in law firms, engineering firms, they’re on construction sites and, you know, their abilities are as diverse as the community.” 

Jensen said the district’s personalized, competency-based approach is designed to meet students at their current skill level and shift the focus from seat time to mastery, where students demonstrate proficiency before moving on to the next skill or grade level. 

“It’s about being proficient and not about being compliant. Obviously, that’s a big shift in education, so we’re putting it together one piece at a time,” he said.

JENSEN HAS also been outspoken about changing how schools are funded, advocating at the legislative level on the funding disparity between elementary and high school students. In the last legislative session, there was a push to move sixth grade into the high school funding model because funding is set at a different rate for seventh through 12th grade than for kindergarten through sixth.  

“I believe that our elementary kids are worth just as much as our high school kids. They’re not worth less. Our current funding mechanism, our elementary students are funded by the state about $1,500 less per student than our high school students,” Jensen said, compounded by class size restrictions to meet state accreditation standards, which means hiring more teachers. “The funding inequity is about $5 million by the time you multiply it per student across the elementary and high school.” 

He said another issue among northwest school administrators is the over-reliance on local property taxes to fund public schools. 

“This is a tough issue in our community. So, you have this system in our state, where we collect taxes based on property value, and what we’ve seen in Northwest Montana specifically is a really sharp increase of property value, which increases people’s property tax. That increases money going into the state pool, and then when it comes back to the schools, we get the same funding in Kalispell [per student] as they do in Glendive,” Jensen said, giving an example. 

Taxpayers in the Flathead Valley are paying in more than is being returned in funding for the schools. This forces the schools to run levies and bonds in communities that are already feeling overburdened by taxes, Jensen said.  

“This is not something we’re choosing as educators,” he said. “These are the rules we have to play with and this is the only way we can fund our schools by asking the local taxpayers and we think the system needs to be updated, so when we go to Helena, we’re going to advocate for fairer systems to share the tax burden across our state.”

 AS THE district works to balance its budget under pressure from inflation, levy challenges and limited reserves, Jensen said the district’s staff and partner districts will be central to that effort.

He also reiterated a desire to strengthen connections with partner school districts. 

“We’re unique in that we’re one of the few places in the state that has this many partner districts ... 60% of our high school kids come from partner districts, and they’re all independent districts,” Jensen said. 

Jensen said sharing practices with partner districts remains a priority, including through the Doris Mountain Summit on June 24-25 at Flathead High School, which will focus on personalized, competency-based learning. 

“This is our third year,” Jensen said. “Our biggest participant base is teachers and administrators from outside of Kalispell Public Schools. Our goal is to connect educators across the greater Flathead Valley and then across our state.”

Reporter Hilary Matheson can be reached at 406-758-4431 or hmatheson@dailyinterlake.com. If you value local journalism, pledge your support at dailyinterlake.com/support.