001I'm Le Miller and I interviewed Justice Stoner for school board. Uh, what inspired you to run for the position on the school board? Feel like there's a lot of room to improve um the school and just kind of be more involved in what's happening in the school, both high school and the elementary school and middle school um and drive it in a direction uh in a good direction with the challenges that we face going forward. What is your vision for the future of our school district? My main vision is actually financial stability for the school. Um with challenges that we face like state bill 260 or senate bill 260 but the state um you know we're at risk of losing a lot of funding for the school and I would like to at least have
002a plan to mitigate that in the future. How do you plan to support students success both inside and outside of the school? Uh uh kind of following the my last answer, I think the my main response there is making sure that the school is a a safe place through some of the changes that are needed to, you know, like roof replacements, some other things that are already being worked. Um but just again make sure that the funding is available for both school programs with like sports and uh you know band and things like that as well as um you know in-classroom activities as well. So uh all of that stuff comes from money, right? So, we have to figure out a way to get it where it needs to be. Um, yeah, that's it. Are
003there any specific programs or curriculum changes you would advocate for? Um, not a nothing that comes to mind. Um, there's uh nothing specific that comes to mind anyway. Like I'm a big advocate for um kind of classroom first, right? Uh I always support um kind of expanding our educational horizons before we I would start looking at um like extracurricular activities like sports and things like that. Um because I feel like the first business or the first job of the school is to provide education activities. I mean I definitely see the role of sports and you know again musical activities things that are extracurricular um as being a major function of the school as well but um I think the classroom education is the main part of that. So um I guess my answer to that
004question would be I would give a bent towards I would have a bent towards educational like in classroom educational activities first if it came down to prioritizing uh would you say you are someone who listens to the students and keeps your their opinions in mind? Can you give us an example of the situation where you would uh yeah I mean I think definitely always listen to the students um and even just in some of the schoolboard meetings that I've attended in the past you know there's been a number of issues where students spoke up um the the school calendar one is is a discussion not the most recent iteration the the one I guess was a year and a half ago where um I didn't agree with the approach that the school board took in
005that particular vote where they decided to back out of the 4-day uh schedule and that was very contrary to I think almost every student that got up and spoke at that school board meeting was very much in favor of the 4-day um and then there was also the uh community opinion of that as well so which matched the students pretty closely um so that was that's one where I think I would have very much listened to what the students had to say um because they made a lot of good points, right? And kind of following what I was saying earlier. Um the education the in-classroom education environment is very important to me. So if you as students collectively think that um you learn better in a 4-day environment, I definitely want to hear that. Right.
006Um, and now I'm not going to say it's going to be un universally everything you guys say goes, but you know, your opinion definitely does matter. And you know, that'll be tempered with external realities as well sometimes. But what what are your opinions on the 4 day week school week in the coming years? Wow, unintentional segue. Um, my opinion is that my my honest opinion is that it it is probably best there. There's two differenti scenarios. Honestly, I think it for elementary school kids and and younger kids in general, and I think it's probably elementary school kids, a fiveday is probably honestly better. It kind of keeps them engaged for a majority of the week. Uh and you know the other side of it is too is like parents for kids that age also struggle
007more little more to find child care. Not to say that the purpose of school is child care or anything like that but those are some factors that I think play in there. Um on the high school middle school and high school side I mean I think of the four days probably better. Everybody seems to be a little bit more engaged from what I hear um across multiple different kind of spaces, but kids of that age seem to be a little more engaged and and also gives you a little bit of a longer weekend too to do some other things that um you can pursue. Uh what are your plans for the Levy or thoughts on the two levies going into the community this spring? Um, I think good question. So, the levies I think they're
008they're necessary. Um, I don't I'm not a 100% sure that I totally follow the amount of some of the levies, but I like it is definitely needed like for the roof and some of the repairs of the school. And, you know, if we if the levies get passed, there will be no problem. Um, there's plenty of projects that that money needs to go towards. I just I think it might be a little bit tough for some folks to swallow um given the amount the amount of the levy, but like I said, the money is all needed. I'm not 100% sure whether it should maybe it could have been broken up into smaller pieces or something over multiple years, but that that's a different discussion entirely. No matter what, the money is needed for the school
009and the facility. What is your opinion on the dress code? Are you going to enforce it or let things slide? Uh yeah, it's a good question. Uh I'm a former military man, so I have very strong opinions about dress codes. Um you know, I don't think this is like a private school or a Catholic school or something like that where there's a very strict dress code, but uh I do think the standards that are set by the school um need to be enforced, right? Otherwise, there's not much point to having rules. Um, and I think that's particularly something that that um, younger folks such as yourselves need to understand and u, embrace for lack of a better term. So um, it's for the safety and envir the learning environment of the students. If the SB260
010were to pass, what would your suggestion what would your suggestions be to the school? Going to kind of backward answer this question. the I think the school needs to start planning now for what they're going to do if SB260 passes um completely because I I believe it just passed um the Senate recently and it still has a couple more levels to go before it becomes uh law in the state. But so we have some time, a little bit of time, not much time to figure that out. But if we're reactively trying to figure out how we're going to fund levies after the fact, um it's already too late in my opinion. So, that's part one is let's try and figure something out. Now, as far as what we're going to do, um I think we're
011going to quite frankly have to take some very creative approaches to marketing future levies and other things like that because the hit to the individual households and taxpayers is going to be much higher than what it would have been. Um, and hindsight's also 2020, but if SB260 passes, we kind of lost the initiative already anyway because we could have negotiated with one hand on the wheel um, prior to this whole thing happening. And like I said, if it passes this time, that's gone. If it doesn't pass, we should also very much proactively look at going back to the table with Big Sky, the folks at Big Sky, and negotiating like, hey, we can let you out at a higher slightly higher number. Um, and do something like that where again, we have one hand on
012the steering wheel as opposed to none. All right. Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions.