Charlo District adds staff
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CHARLO — Charlo School District intends to add staff next term, after several successive years of budget cuts.
The board’s decision last week to add a Spanish teacher and another staff member sparked questions from trustees, parents, and teachers about what exactly the district’s needs are.
Principal Steve Love asked the board in a May 20 meeting to require students to take Spanish instead of online language classes, because the district has hired a teacher to fulfill the position. Previously, students could meet the district’s foreign language requirement by learning one of six languages offered through free online courses taught by a state consortium called the Montana Digital Academy.
Love worried that students will try to fulfill their foreign language requirement online, although an on-staff teacher is available. If enough students aren’t willing to take an in-house class, then the district will have difficulty justifying the salary, Love said.
The district generally prohibits students from taking online classes that are offered in-house to prevent this conundrum.
“If we provide biology, we’re not going to let a kid take it online,” Love said.
But one parent whose daughter wants to take German next semester claimed the decision would pigeon-hole the girl into taking a language she didn’t want to learn in instead of a language she’s passionate about.
Board member Dave DeGrandpre said that he thought it was reasonable for students to be able to take online classes for languages other than Spanish.
“It’s only going to be the kids who are really motivated,” DeGrandpre said.
It sounds easy in theory, but actually could pose a large problem in scheduling classes, Love said.
Each student has to be in a supervised classroom with Internet access to take the online classes. There is limited staff and computers available to do that.
Students can always enroll in an online foreign language class on their own time, Love said, but school schedulers won’t build an entire schedule around it if in-district Spanish is a better option.
Board chairman Shane Reum said that the decision to add a Spanish teacher was meant to help students.
“A lot of kids were saying it was hard as heck on Digital Academy,” Reum said.
The board did not vote on whether or not students will be able to register for other language courses online.
Additional pros and cons of adding another staff member to the mix were also discussed.
The board directed Love to advertise for positions and bring recommendations as soon as possible about which candidates would best suit the needs of the district.
In other business:
• School board members LaDonna Fryberger, Tonya Truman, Duane Weible and Reece Middlemist were sworn in.
• Reum was re-elected chairman of the board. Art Soukkala was elected vice-chair.
