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Friends of Neighborhood Schools: Keep Helena’s neighborhood schools open
The district faces an operational shortfall of millions of dollars that must be brought into balance.
The school board’s first steps to address the budget shortfall have been to appoint committees and hire contractors to recommend cuts, propose long-term building plans, and find sources of untapped revenue. The board has not yet acted on any recommendations, but one idea that has emerged is to close the doors on two of Helena’s neighborhood schools: Hawthorne and Broadwater.
As it turns out, closing these schools doesn’t save much money. Most of an elementary school’s budget is in salaries and instructional-related overhead. Those costs simply get shifted to the schools that take in the displaced students.
We’re calling on the school board to address the budget deficit without closing Helena’s neighborhood schools. The costs are far too high, and the savings negligible, to justify the catastrophic disruptions closures would cause. The school board needs to find other, less destructive alternatives to addressing the budget shortfall.
Moreover, we’re calling on the school board to be transparent in this process. Several meetings where school closures were first discussed were closed to the public. This error needs to be corrected with the process being well communicated and open to public involvement.
Friends of Neighborhood Schools, a group formed by Helena parents to educate the public about the negative impacts of school closures.
Helena IR: Friends of Neighborhood Schools: Keep Helena’s neighborhood schools open
Bozeman schools receive 88 student applications through open enrollment
Under a new state law that allows students to attend any school in the state for free, 88 out-of-district students have applied to enroll in Bozeman Public Schools next year.
Out of the total applications, 34 students are new to Bozeman schools, Superintendent Casey Bertram said.
The other 54 students have already attended school in Bozeman previously by paying tuition, he said. Those students had to have special circumstances, like having a parent who is a staff member in the district or being a high school senior who moved away but wanted to finish their final year of school in Bozeman, according to district policy.
Those families will no longer be charged tuition next year, Bertram said. HB 203 shifts some of the financial responsibility away from the host school by requiring the student’s resident district to pay tuition — funded by property taxes — to the other district.
Bozeman Chronicle: Bozeman schools receive 88 student applications through open enrollment
OPI employees send complaint about workplace policy changes
Members of the Montana Federation of Public Employees, the union representing over 12,500 education professionals, issued a formal complaint to the Office of Public Instruction regarding recent reductions in office space and mandated remote work for most employees.
Specifically, the letter references decisions by the education agency to consolidate office space on the premise that it cuts costs and enhances flexibility. In the letter sent to OPI, MFPE claims it was not informed of the decision nor was it offered the opportunity to provide feedback.
“Vacating the private lease is a responsible use of precious taxpayer dollars that allow more resources to flow to our Montana students and schools,” Arntzen said in a statement in 2022. “My goal is to create a smaller and smarter government by allowing our employees to live in the communities they serve.”
Arntzen has made reducing spending a central point of her administration. Her critics say such measures, many of them dubious, only serve to hurt Montana educators and students.
“Because this property and this lease remain in the state inventory, there is no immediate cost savings to the state by the action being taken by the superintendent,” Rep. David Bedey, R-Hamilton.
Ravalli Republic: OPI employees send complaint about workplace policy changes
Charter school looks to provide opportunity for non-English speaking students in Billings
Billings Public Schools will add three new charter schools at the beginning of the 2024-25 school year, including one that aims to provide better opportunities for the district's non-English speaking students.
The charter, which will be called the Multilingual Academy, is an attempt to reach a population that has grown substantially in the past five years. It will also serve at least 50 refugee students, who are set to arrive in March.
Those refugee students will come from Afghanistan, Iraq, Honduras and Venezuela and will be the first wave of refugees brought to Billings after the city was approved by the state to become Montana's second resettlement city, following Missoula.
“We went from 25 students five or six years ago to now being close to 400,” Olszewski said. “So we needed to do something different.”
Olszewski said that increase is partly from families that would come through the area to work on farms during the harvest, but also because Billings has multiple job opportunities and relatively inexpensive housing.
As of now, the Multilingual Academy will be offered to middle school and high school-aged students. It will be available to both migrant students currently in the district and any refugee students moving in.
Olszewski said the plan was to offer one class session in the morning and one in the afternoon to help provide enough space. The students will attend their regular school during the other parts of their day.
KTVQ: Charter school looks to provide opportunity for non-English speaking students in Billings
Helena parent group aims to inform others on district projects
A group of parents from around the Helena Public Schools district have formed a nonprofit organization in light of statements made in early November 2023 by board and SMA Architecture and Design representatives at Hawthorne Elementary School that caused members to fear neighborhood schools may close.
Warhank said during a Jan. 9 board meeting that the representatives from SMA said the firm is not considering student outcome in terms of the master plan.
Members said they want to work with the board and the district to come up with solutions within the district even though some parents within the group believe transparency is lacking from the district.
The facilities master planning process was first referenced in 2022, according to district officials.
Officials said the plan has also been talked about in countless meetings since 2022 that were posted online with the agendas made public on the district's website.
King said they believe the district relying on levies and community voters to keep the district operational is not a sustainable option. They added that this comes back to the discussion of the school funding formula on the state level and believes it needs to be reworked to meet the needs of school districts in Montana.
Helena IR: Helena parent group aims to inform others on district projects
news.txt · Last modified: 2024/01/04 05:22 by lmuszkie