Summer is drawing to a close and area elementary schools will be beginning classes in the next week. Seeley Lake Elementary, Sunset School and Swan Valley Elementary Schools are all welcoming new teachers, adding new programs and learning tools and have been making upgrades to their facilities.
Since all elementary schools are separate Districts from Missoula County Public Schools, their school boards have approved their own reopening plan and COVID mitigation measures. These three schools made very little revision to their reopening plan from the spring and are starting in-person. Should the need arise, all teachers are prepared to teach remotely.
At the elementary schools, masks are recommended but optional for staff and students. The schools will maintain cleaning protocols, reinforce hand washing and sanitization and encourage social distancing in classrooms and at all activities. Parents are asked to keep their children home when sick.
School boards will revisit this plan at their monthly meetings or adjust as the need arises. Due to the fluid nature of COVID, the most current information will be provided through teachers and the schools’ online platforms. The information below was provided the week of Aug. 23 and may have changed.
Seeley Lake Elementary
Seeley Lake Elementary starts Wednesday, Sept. 1. They returned to their 8 a.m. start time but they will get out at 3:06 p.m. This additional six minutes added to the day will allow flexibility with training days for teachers. Superintendent Josh Gibbs said they are hoping to hold some half day teacher trainings throughout the year instead of doing it all at the beginning of the year.
SLE is offering a remote option for families who do not what their child attending in-person. SLE contracted with the online learning program named Edgenuity. The student will have a teacher and the learning material provided through the program and SLE will record their grade. Enrollment in this remote alternative will be for the entire semester. Gibbs said there are very few families selecting this option this year.
In regards to close contacts, Gibbs said if they do have a case in the school this year, they will notify families that are potential close contacts. However, the Health Department will set the quarantine timeline.
Gibbs said last year COVID had very little direct impact on the school. He hopes families will continue to keep children home if they are sick and take COVID seriously.
“Hopefully we can make it through the school year again without having to go remote or having to close down,” Gibbs said.
SLE has filled all of their open positions. Fourth and fifth grade teachers Chantel Thornsberry and Erika Pitman transferred up to the junior high. New teachers Lexi Higarda will be teaching fourth grade and Jona Bartlett will be teaching fifth grade. The other new teacher is David Cahoon who will be teaching physical education. While not new to SLE, Bradley Miller and Cari McMillan took the open paraprofessional positions.
Transitional Kindergarten teacher Laura Devins received a grant through Headwaters Health Foundation of Western Montana to offer preschool for three-year-olds. It will run Tuesdays and Thursdays from 1:30-3 p.m. starting tentatively Sept. 21. Students must be three years old by Sept. 10.
“It gives them the opportunity to get in school and kind of see what that routine looks like and get some experience with the classroom setting so it will be really good,” Gibbs said.
Currently the program is capped at 10 students and is full. The class size is based on available staffing and volunteers. Call the office, 406-677-2265, to get on the waiting list.
Gibbs said the janitorial staff Cindy Poteet and Shiann Chadwick have done a fantastic job getting the school ready for the year. They got rid of stuff that was no longer needed, have done a lot of painting, they have learned how to and cleaned the carpets and refinished the floors in-house.
Gibbs said they are planning on offering all of the 21st Century Learning programs this year. This includes the chess club before school and several after school clubs including: STEAM beginning Sept. 13; homework help for third – fifth and sixth – eighth graders beginning Sept. 13; Outdoor Adventure Club/Snow School starting Sept. 16 and additional family engagement activities that will be announced. Additional 21st Century activities starting in January include the Nordic Ski Race Team and Junior Prep Ski Team and spring soccer for kindergarteners through fourth graders in May.
The flag football and volleyball teams have a full schedule of games. They will be playing with the Copper League. The League hopes to host playoffs and tournaments at the end of the season.
Gibbs said the best place for information currently is on the Seeley Lake Elementary Facebook page. He is also very excited for the new website and app that will be launched by the end of September. The new app will allow families easy access to a newsfeed, lunch menus, staff contact information and any other important documents on their phone.
“I think it is going to be a great year. We have an awesome staff, the school board has … done a great job, I think, through the duration [of COVID] knowing what our community wants and needs. And we have a super supportive community,” Gibbs said. “I think we have all the ingredients to make it a great year.”
Sunset School – Greenough
Teachers Toni Hatten and Lilah Fox welcomed 12 students to Sunset School the first day of school Sept. 1.
Sunset will continue offering art and music classes from visiting instructors Ashley Mitchell, Tangled Tones and Matthew Nord and continue swimming lessons this fall at Currents in Missoula. The Resort at Paws Up has offered additional space if needed to hold a large gathering or event such as music performances, art exhibits and their yearly play as it relates to mitigating health risks.
New to the school this year, visiting instructor Dean Phillips will provide technology assistance to the school and offer technology workshops with the students once a month.
A new tether ball and monkey bars were added to the playground for the students to enjoy at recess. While no other major facility upgrades occurred over the summer, Hatten said they are also consulting an architect for a possible addition which would provide a new entrance, expand the library and kitchen area and add an ADA bathroom.
The Washington, DC trip, that was planned for June, was rescheduled for May 29, 2022. Hatten said they hope to add New York City to the trip if it is financially possible. The students will be fundraising this year in their communities.
Sunset School is publishing its first school website very soon. It will provide the latest information about the school and staff, upcoming events, school board information, parent/student handbook and links to their Facebook page and YouTube Channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiMa_wZos_IXM3tu0_HZ_Rw). Hatten encourages parents, students and community members to visit https://sites.google.com/sunsetschool1234.org/sunset-school/home
Swan Valley School
On Sept. 7 Swan Valley School is welcoming 36 new students this year, 11 up from last year in August. New Principal Aaron Morgenstern said the increase is from families moving into the area, families that were homeschooling their children choosing to return and young children reaching school age.
The three- and four-year-old preschool is returning in the mornings Monday through Wednesday with teacher Dani Parcell.
They will also offer a transitional kindergarten option for four-year-olds who are close to the five-year-old age requirement cutoff of Sept. 10. The transitional kindergarteners will be integrated in the kindergarten – second grade classroom with teacher Chris Mauldin and attend five days a week in the morning.
In addition to resuming preschool, Parcell will also offer art for all the grade levels this year. Each of the classes will rotate physical education and art in the afternoons.
Along with serving as the part-time principal, Morgenstern will also be teaching general music and beginning band. The kindergarten – second grade and third - fifth grade classes will meet daily for music and the sixth – eighth grade students will begin band.
Morgenstern said not only will this bring back the music program, something that is highly valued by the teachers and community, it will also give the teachers 35-40 minutes of prep time.
“That is hugely important especially for classroom teachers in the situation up there where they are teaching multiple grades,” Morgenstern said. “They may not have the student load like Seeley does, but they are having to plan basically three different lesson plans for every subject every day. It takes a lot of prep, especially if they are doing their jobs right.”
They are getting new music curriculum and Morgenstern is working on fixing and replacing instruments. He looks forward to continuing the Christmas concert with the entire school and hopes to collaborate with the music students at Seeley Lake Elementary for a combined band concert this spring. He added resuming the 2 Valleys Stage music informances for the students is really exciting.
Morgenstern said the music cabin was used as storage for the past two years and has been overrun by bats and mice. It will need a whole new remodel before it is a usable space. The piano was unusable due to rodent damage and will be replaced with a piano that didn’t sell in SLE’s surplus auction once they have the location remodeled.
The junior high students will also get a new history curriculum. Morgenstern said there are other curriculums that will be considered for replacement at upcoming board meetings.
He will also be working with the board, staff and community to determine other needs and a larger plan to allocate their COVID funding. They received large amounts of funding that must be spent by 2021 that are strictly to benefit the students to help with “loss of learning time.” It can be used for everything from technology to new curriculum to new teaching aids to staff.
“This is where Heather [Mincey] is a wiz,” Morgenstern said. “She knows what funds can be used for what things. We definitely have more funds at this point than we have ideas.”
Morgenstern said custodians Chris and Kellie Auchenbach have done a great job getting the school ready for the start of school. They waxed the floors and painted the office and the hallways white.
“The hallway is much brighter, it just kind of glows,” Morgenstern said. “The plan next summer is to paint a couple of classrooms and the rest of the office and kind of get rid of all the yellow.”
While teachers are prepared to switch to a remote model should it be required, Morgenstern said they are going to do everything they can to stay in-person. Swan Valley School is not offering a fully remote option so those families who choose not to send their student in person, will need to find another option separate from the school.
“With everything changing so rapidly again, who knows,” Morgenstern said. “It is a very fluid situation and we will adjust as necessary. I think the main goal is just to keep the health and safety of the kids in mind. We want a healthy, safe environment for them and we will do whatever we need to do to make sure that is being maintained.”
Swan Valley School will put out most of the information via their Facebook page. However, Morgenstern said they are working on a new website that he hopes will soon be a one-stop place for school information.
“I think people are going to have to be really flexible on their thought process about what school looks like for a while until this pandemic is really over,” Morgenstern said. “Be flexible, keeping in mind that decisions are being made with the health and safety of kids in mind. I think if that is where the decision process is coming from, and not from any other agenda, we are going to be fine.”
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