Meet Seeley Elementary's new superintendent

Christina Hartmann had teaching on the brain as a career path from a young age. She always played school with her three younger siblings, where she was the one in the role of the teacher and made sure her siblings were organized into various parts to conduct the role play.

In high school, she was asked to be a teacher's aide in a kindergarten class. She worked with a non-verbal student for two years, and was inspired by how she was able to see this student's lightbulb moments from the gains they made working together.

"It just really warmed my heart and made me just feel really great about what we could do," Hartmann said.

Hartmann will be stepping into the role of superintendent at Seeley Lake Elementary School this fall. She moved to Seeley Lake from Townsend earlier this month and has been getting to know the school's staff, the town and the way the school operates. Hartmann helped the Townsend School District, where she was the principal of the elementary school, transition into a four-day school week, something that she faces at Seeley Elementary as the school makes its transition to a four-day week this fall.

Hartmann had a lot of good things to say about the four-day school week. Teachers were able to get deeper in curriculum topics. Parents weren't as concerned about childcare on the fifth day of the school week as the year went on. Staff morale went way up. Attendance improved.

A lot of these benefits really were the result of the extra autonomy given to teachers, parents and students. Ultimately, the schedule provided flexibility for a lot of people, Hartmann said.

A fifth day program that Hartmann brought to the Townsend School District allowed parents to use that day for childcare if they needed it, let staff decide whether they wanted to add extra hours or have a longer weekend and solicited input from students on what they wanted to get out of an optional day of school.

Hartmann was the administrator of the Townsend School District's 21st Century Grant, something Seeley Lake Elementary also is privy to, which provides funding for extra academic opportunities to rural schools. She used this grant to create the district's fifth day program and incorporated tutoring, pottery, archery, e-sports, and STEAM - or science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics - courses.

The program was available from 7:30 a.m. until 6 p.m. and parents could drop students off at any time within that window. Transportation and lunch were provided. Teachers were paid through the 21st Century Grant to teach on the fifth day and paraprofessionals, classified staff and kitchen staff could work that day to get a 40-hour schedule if that was their preference. Hartmann said attendance for the fifth day program was fairly strong until May when the weather started leaning toward summer.

In Townsend's first year of a four-day school week, Hartmann said part of the learning curve was realizing that things like assemblies or events needed to be planned further in advance, since as the schedule indicates, there are less days in the week. The school district also created pacing guides right away, Hartmann said, that helped teachers make sure they got through the curriculum within a shortened week.

For Seeley Lake Elementary, that fifth day will have tutoring or STEAM options. Hartmann plans to look at that tutoring piece and make sure it has buy-in from both parents and students, and intends to develop an appropriate pacing plan for the curriculum, which this year will include an updated English Language Arts curriculum.

"I hope that we can build something that will give them buy-in and that students, they'll be (engaged) with it. I don't want to be where they're just bored and we lose them," Hartmann said.

Hartmann received her undergraduate degree in elementary education in 1999 from Montana State University in Billings and her master's degree in administration in 2012 from Montana State University in Bozeman before she became the elementary principal in the Townsend School District, where she has been since 2016.

When she started applying for positions, her husband Keith gave up his mechanic shop in Townsend with the stipulation that she chose a job in a place where they both wanted to live. Seeley Lake fit that bill for both of them.

"We've very excited about it, we want to be here," Hartmann said. "I'm excited to see another view on schools on a smaller scale and I'm excited to work with this team."