001let's go ahead and get started tonight um good evening everyone i'd like to begin by welcoming all of you in attendance um thank you for supporting our community in our school district madison valley education association is hosting this event this evening and we'd like to thank the five candidates here for taking this opportunity to express their views to the community our candidates in front of you we have paul bills to my left here laura blake marilyn jenkins christian peterson and erica my name is paul kavan i'm a teacher here at evans high school and i please have the opportunity to moderate the school board the schedule this evening will be much like last year we will begin with questions prepared by mdea all candidates have been provided with these questions prior to tonight each candidate
002will have two minutes to answer wendy and mr mckindrick will be keeping time they do have a sign in front of them they will give you a second heads up to go ahead and wrap up your question if we do get to our two minute time limit and you are been thought go ahead and finish that thought and move to the next candidate um after we get through our prepared questions i will open this up the audience we'll take a short intermission and come back and we'll allow the community then to ask our candidate's questions all right so we are uh our order everybody is just now put up order right here so our first question will go to mr bills our first question here for all you candidates as well take this opportunity to
003introduce yourself to the community who you are a little bit of background yourself and also along with your introduction could you please establish how long you've lived in this community and what activities are or have you been involved in within the community mr bills your time begins now my name is paul bills i have lived here for 14 years i taught school here for 13 years taught school for 13 years in bridger montana i like to fish i like to get outdoors i like spending time with family more than anything else i love getting together with uh important co-workers i think that's important there's a lot bigger things in life than just work i currently work for department revenue i'm a state employee so i went from one fire into another [Music] but as far
004as community involvement you know when i taught i didn't have time i've spent 100 hours here teaching coaching aiding tournaments things like that so i've been out of it for about four years it's important to give something back to the community that is given to you thank you mr bills uh now send it over to miss blake ms blake please introduce yourself and how long have you lived in the community and what activities are or have you been involved hi my name is laura blake i'm a montana native i was born and raised in melbourne over the hill when i was in a small town so that ages me a little bit i graduated from belgrade high and then i went to montana tech the question we'll start with miss blake why did you decide
005to run for the school board and what do you see as a primary role of this board your time starts now great okay um i'm running to keep small town america and it's what it is um i like the small town america values that are here in this school system and they're the same ones that i grew up with and they're the ones that i want to keep for my kids and the kids that are here in ennis people are moving to small town americas everywhere from everywhere to all small town americas everywhere else in the country um there are escaping covets there's keeping government policies they're escaping not so stellar public schools and so we're seeing an influx of a lot of new students from all over and all all kinds of different backgrounds
006um that big city life and those policies are not where people want to raise their kids anymore and small town americas like ennis are where they do want to raise their kids and that's why i want to keep it the way it is um i'll strive to keep it that way um i want a wholesome true education given to our kids i really disagree with critical race theory and radical ideologies that are being introduced in a lot of other schools in the country and i oppose those and would stand against those in any shape or form being introduced into our school we have a group of teachers that have high expectations for kids and they clearly love their jobs and they clearly love the kids that they teach um you know we have a group
007of teachers that teach manners and kindness and thoughtfulness and responsibility and a sense of belonging and i want to keep it that way we have a small town community where everyone helps each other we hold the door open for the next person we say please and thank yous we help people take their cards back to the grocery store if someone needs it and that's that's where i was raised and that's how i want it to be for my kids um i think it's our job to raise our children to be successful adults and i just value the you know i value the parent goal um and that's why i've been in this morning the whole last year because for parents that had concerns about the things that were going on in the community thank you
008miss blake all right move over to miss miss jenkins here miss jenkins why did you decide to run for the school board what do you see as a work my timekeepers ready time begins now i had been approached before many times and wasn't quite ready once i retired i needed to reorient a little so i have had some people approach me again and i think it is time i've always had an active interest in education obviously i taught 29 years in this school i had four children who graduated from the school i have five children grandchildren who are still in school and three who have graduated and i know what a good system it is i understand the priorities and i'm hoping that by running i we'll be able to help do what a report
009is primarily supposed to do which is to give some citizen input and control to the school and also to make sure that each one of our students receives what is necessary so that when they graduate they will be producing members of society thank you mr peterson same question to you why did you decide to run for the school board and what do you see as the primary role of this award so i decided to run for the school board to bridge the gap with the empty nesters and the taxpaying citizens in this district to pay attention to our school and support it even though we don't have kids the school needs support from every single taxpayer in this district it's all too often that people say that they since they don't have kids they don't
010need to pay attention and that is wrong our children are our future this school historically has produced amazing children thanks to the teachers and the guidance from the previous councils of our board they have gone out into the world and they are an absolute prize to have that they take our values from our small town out into the world rather than having the influence of the outside big cities come to ennis and tell us how to run it we're going to send our our kids that are flying out into the world and they're going to show them how we run in here uh what was the second question sorry what do you see as your primary role on the board primary role is to um obviously maintain the policies that are already in place make
011changes if needed give support to the superintendent and also listen to the parents when they have concerns the parents are the child's parents have a right to say what they feel is necessary in the school and their voice absolutely has to be heard as well as we need to support our teachers not only with their pay by going to the state legislature but also housing products for the other teachers great support thank you miss pittman what did you why did you decide to run for the school board and what do you see as the primary role of this board so nf schools are a big part of the reason why my family relocated here as my fellow candidates have said we've got really great schools we have teachers who care we have an outsized number
012of programs for how small our town is we give our kids so much opportunity which is really amazing and as we grow as a community and as we evolve as a community i want to make sure we keep that like laura said we teach our kids strong morals ethics and values you don't see that in bigger cities you don't see that in other places i want to make sure that we are maintaining that for our kids uh but like any district there are things that we need to address you know as we'll talk about later montana's teachers are the lowest paid in the united states that is absolutely unacceptable especially with the rising cost of living in a place like tennis we need a school board that's going to go to the state and the
013national level to fight for our futures and help them we also need a school board that's going to think outside the box think creatively to find additional ways to supplement teacher salaries and to entice retain and recruit good educators and staff members to stay here uh you know as i think about the board like christian says it should be a representative of our students our parents our families and our community members this venice community is unlike many other in how willing our community is to give back to our school i want to embrace that and i want our board to extend opportunities to our community to be involved and listen to our parents and our fellow you know endless neighbors and residents my goal as a board member would be to work alongside my neighbors
014fellow parents and fellow board members to make sure that we're fighting for our kids at every step as well thank you and now we will conclude this round with mr bills mr bills are you knowledgeable uh sorry i'm getting ahead of myself here mr bills why did you decide to run for the school board and what do you see as a primary role award i decided to run for the school board like i said earlier because you need to give back to the community how many people how many of us give back to the community look what the lions club the women's club is look what the organization the church community look what they do in this town it's the only reason it survives it's the only reason it stays the way it is um
015if we don't give back then we're just taking advantage and so i think it's important to get back get back um i was also approached by a few different people and i've always said no looks like maryland i needed to get away um i put 26 years into education loved every second of it and then retire and i think it's better that you step away from it for a while and come back i love this school i love the teachers from the school i work with most of the teachers here not all of them some are young i don't know them from adam but i've worked with a lot of them here and you can't find better people and that's because of what previous boards and what previous administration has done they've hired the right
016people don't hire the right people that it doesn't work um as far as role board member i don't have a gym i'm not trying to fire anybody i'm not trying to hire anybody i've got no outside influence the main purpose of the school board remember is to implement policy make policy hire a superintendent i don't belong in a classroom hire people to do that you know i don't belong you know evaluating coaches i did that don't want to do it again you know that's why we hire people be neutral i feel like we need more neutrality here be smart use your money wisely help the people you can thank you mr bills our audience are you knowledgeable of current school policies are you satisfied with them and if not what would you like to see
017change and i guess i would start by saying after is it working after 29 years of teaching here i should be knowledgeable of most of the school policies granted i have not been in the school system for six years so possibly there have been some changes i also have an administrative degree so i am knowledgeable about those policies and while i worked here i was the title ix coordinator for years so i have knowledge of some of the special policies within the school right too and if there are other ones as to the second part of the question as in any profession or any business we all understand that improvement can be made the change and improve all our lives and i have always seen this as something constructive it's a constructive process it has
018nothing to do with criticism the one policy i would like to talk about is a good policy it happens to be the open door policy for the community to come in and have activities here at the school with some restrictions and regulations what i would like to see change there is that this same policy could be open to our students especially our student athletes gym wise in off season and perhaps in the summer time and part of the reason i would like this is because sports in any small community is a good uh interactive association between the community and between the school and it's big and i think with open your policy that way especially with hearing around i know many schools in our district do it so i'm sure that there is a possibility
019it could happen thank you we'll send that same question over to mr peterson mr peterson are you knowledgeable of current school policies are you satisfied with them and if not what would you like to see changed so the answer is no i am not familiar with school policies it's about this much paper that would be my first first thing to do is to learn those again as marilyn stated any policies that need to be revisited and revised obviously that would be the function of paying forward but i can't comment on anything because i'm not sure of what that would be miss pittman are you knowledgeable of current school policies are you satisfied with them and if not what would you like to see changed um as a parent i think i'm pretty up to speed
020on school policy of course if i were to join the school board i would make sure to educate myself on the as christian stated the massive booklet because it's big and there's a lot uh i think you know as the role of the boredom is the responsibility of the board policy is one of the primary things that the board needs to evaluate on an ongoing basis our world is evolving really quickly and we are sending our kids out into a world that you know where unprecedented events occur all the time and there's a lot of social divisiveness in the world today and we need to make sure that school policy allows for us to quickly fairly and effectively address any issues that come up in our school that our policies are setting our kids up
021for success as they graduate in schools and move out to become functioning members of society uh i think that as we look at that and sort of the first thing that i would really want to dive into as i mentioned before one of the biggest things i think we need to focus on as a board is recruiting and retaining great teachers and staff so i want to make sure that our policies around recruiting retention teacher pay staff pay district transportation all the things that we've sort of struggled with this year i think that's where i would start as i looked at policy as a school board member and then of course talk to my fellow parents and community members to see where we should go next mr bill same question to you are you knowledgeable
022of current school policies are you satisfied with them and if not what would you like to see well i used to be pretty up on the policies for a lot of years i got these two years on maryland i guess but um things change the policies are put into place to fix the situation if it's not broke by change you know it's what happens in this school everybody says a lot of great things happen in this school i totally agree so are we going to make policy to keep change from coming it's inevitable it's going to happen that's when we step in there isn't a single policy in that handbook that has not been put into place because a situation arises the situation will arise that's why we're here we have to put a policy
023and to fix the situation great if we don't why would we what we have here is good by change it might be forced down our throat but what are you gonna do am i satisfied with them sure i am i think for the most part people are pretty happy with this they weren't there'd be a lot more changes going on i'm not afraid of what's coming i think that's where people get out of whack you know worry about it when it gets here you know there's some things issues that we have to we have to address absolutely school housing teacher pay i'm sad enough needs to listen to my board members say that that was going to change um but there's certainly a role about women so the policies you bet it's not broke don't
024fix it or if it is if it isn't parallel conflict and we'll go and wrap this round up with miss blake miss blake are you knowledgeable of current school policies are you satisfied with them and if not what would you like to see changed for the most part i think policies are put in place for a reason and they're usually put in place for a good reason like all the other candidates said we don't have policies just because just to have policies there's usually a need for a certain policy there's a lot of policies it's a pretty big stack to be familiar with and so that is where i definitely have a little bit of a weakness but i do have a commitment to keep looking for ways to make the policies better serve our
025kids and better serve parents of the community that has those kids in this school i would keep untangling the coping policies for the things that are no longer necessary my next question will be you