School Board discusses continued Covid challenges

The Bigfork School Board discussed policy changes and heard reports from school staff at its regular meeting Wednesday, Oct. 13.

During his report, Bigfork High School Principal Mark Hansen thanked the community for coming together after the recent death of one of the school’s students, junior Dane Hansen.

“That was a really tough time at school that day, and we continue to have some tough times, so I appreciate our very small, tight-knit community for all of the support they offered at a moment’s notice,” Hansen told the board. “What I’ve always known is that we live in a great community, and times like these show us how great a community it is,”

Board vice chair Zack Anderson also thanked the community and applauded the leadership of Hansen and superintendent Tom Stack, as well as the district’s previous superintendent Matt Jensen, who he said offered help and resources in the days following the student’s death.

IN HER report for the Bigfork Elementary School, Principal Brenda Clarke showed the board some positive news in terms of student learning. She said 32% of elementary school students were scoring above the testing benchmark by the end of spring 2021, compared to 19% at the beginning of the school year in fall of 2020. Clarke said this is “astronomically awesome,” especially during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, which caused schools all over the country to suffer from staffing shortages among many other cataclysmic changes. But, Clarke said she's noticing an interesting trend looking forward.

“In my 25 plus years of teaching, I’ve seen kids be lower than I ever have before — because they were out of school for an entire year last year. We have one student who came to us and he was only in school for three months last year, and that was his kindergarten ...There’s always different levels (of learning) happening in a classroom, but the ones that are happening right now are profoundly lower. We had a first grade teacher say he’s trying to get a student to recognize what the number 3 is, what the number 4 is, let alone what those numbers mean,” Clarke said.

Clarke said she believes there’s a lot of work ahead of them this school year, but that they are working through it and doing the best they can.

THE PANDEMIC continues to present other challenges for educators, including adequate staffing for in-person instruction. Superintendent Stack said the district has had seven staff and eight students with positive Covid cases this year. He said currently there are two staff and two students who are out with a positive case, but that doesn’t include close-contact absences and regular absences. He said monitoring these absences is important for knowing when the school needs to make adjustments in order for students to learn at the best of their ability.

“I’m not really into studying all the analytics, but I want to know what the breaking point is. At what point are we not going to be able to supervise kids and provide a quality education?” Stack asked.

Stack said that is not certain yet, but that there will be adequate warning for parents, students and staff if they have to switch to at-home learning. He said he and the administrative team don’t plan on sending students home during the middle of the day.

“We’re going to try to make that call as early as possible, by noon or 1 or 2 p.m., so parents can prepare for that next day. It’s not going to be like a snow day where we’re going to call you at 5 in the morning,” Stack said.

Bigfork Middle School Principal Charlie Appleby said his school is working around these absences. He said at the beginning of the day, he and his team take account of all of the absences, how many substitute teachers are available, and who is left without coverage.

“We work with our paraeducators, and say ‘well OK, maybe Rachelle can do kindergarten, and let’s put Lori in fifth grade, and Sandra can do the first half of this other class before the teacher comes back,’ and that kind of thing, we kind of work it out,” Appleby said.

He said teachers also work to help “patch” these absences by covering other classes. He said having eight teachers out is manageable, but if they reached 10, it could constitute moving to learning from home.

Appleby said that doesn’t necessarily mean the entire school moves to learning from home.

“Do we have to close the whole school? No, but we might close some classes, or grade levels,” Appleby said.

Public comment was supportive of adding more volunteers to the mix to help with shortages — something the schools did more of last year. Appleby agreed to start looking at bringing back the school’s Watchdog program, as long as it’s safe for volunteers, students and staff.

IN OTHER news, Anderson said athletic director Matt Porrovechio proposed installing new artificial turf on the football field that will be good for both football and soccer. Porrovechio is looking to start a 501c3, or a nonprofit entity, to fund the project. Anderson saidall of the costs would be funded by the nonprofit and will not require raising taxes. A total cost or specific timeline for the project have not been determined. The board agreed to have Porrovecchio start looking into what it would take to get the new turf.

Superintendent Stack proposed raising the wage for sub route bus drivers from $17.70 to $20 an hour. He said even though the board voted to recently raise the wage (along with a raise for other school staff) they’re still short on bus drivers.

“We haven’t had to cut any routes yet, but we’ll see,” Stack said.

In his proposal to the board, Transportation Director Danny Walker said other districts like Kalispell District 5, pay their bus drivers $20.40 an hour, and the Treasure State Transit pays their drivers around $25 an hour. He asked the board to consider raising the wage in Bigfork in order to stay competitive.

The board approved the proposal to raise the wage to $20 an hour.

If anyone is interested in signing up to become a bus driver, please contact the Bigfork Schools District Office by calling 406-837-7400 and ask for Danny Walker.