Swan River School board resolves library and music issues
The Swan River School board of trustees found two routes to fill the position of school librarian and music instructor that also meet the state’s requirements for accreditation during their regular meeting on Oct 15.
Accreditation is basically a way to signify which schools meet state standards for things such as staff training, class sizes, test scores, and other standardized criteria. Essentially, it’s a measuring stick the state uses that can impact how much funding a school receives since an accredited school is more attractive to prospective students than one that is not.
In Swan River’s case, they were in need of a librarian and a music teacher.
“The library was the easy one,” Principal Marc Bunker said.
The board approved a deal with the Montana Small Schools Alliance where for $300 a year the alliance will provide the school with a sort of on-call librarian. This leaves the school free to hire whomever they want to physically run the school’s library with the alliance librarian available as a resource.
Because of this, Swan River is able to keep Margaret Harris in the school’s library. Harris is a certified English teacher, but in order to maintain accreditation the school needed a certified librarian through the alliance.
“It just really makes it more convenient,” Harris said. “I am glad we don’t have to worry about the endorsement issues and now I can focus on the library and helping kids learn how to use the resources that we have here.”
As for their music teacher position, the board decided to re-open the position with an altered approach to how they field for candidates. Bunker said that the school would prefer to hire someone with a teaching license, but they don’t necessarily have to be licensed in order to teach the class.
“I checked with OPI (Montana Office of Public Instruction) and they are fine with this,” Bunker said. “We can hire someone as an aide that loves music and loves working with students and can make that work and still meet accreditation.”
Bunker said this is possible so long as a certified teacher is assigned to the class and observes his or her instruction at least once a month. Bunker said the board didn’t feel comfortable disrupting other teachers’ schedules to do the observations, so Bunker agreed to do it himself.
During their meeting last week the board also discussed requests from local religious groups to use the school, one for a Bible study and the other for a youth group. Bunker said the board discussed how they wanted to handle the requests since the groups wanted to invited students to participate.
“Basically, we want to be supportive to the community but also sensitive to how we handle it,” Bunker said.
Bunker said they approved use of the facilities, and the groups could leave flyers in the office.
In other Swan River School news, boys basketball practice begins this week and the school is currently doing its yearly fundraiser by selling chocolate.