Updated at 1 p.m. Oct. 10 with the link to the GFPS information page on the proposal
To address teacher recruitment and retention challenges, officials at Great Falls Public Schools are proposing to create a magnet school.
District administrators are proposing to create an education immersion school with the hope of becoming a charter school under a new state law.
GFPS officials have dubbed their plan CORE School.
Their plan is to apply for public charter school status under the new law, which would keep the school under the school board’s authority but with an advisory committee with membership specified by the law.
If approved for public charter school status, the school could have the option some private funding support and some flexibility in their operations but would still fall under existing school policies, officials told the school board during their Oct. 9 meeting.
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The board will be asked to formally consider and vote on the public charter school application during their Oct. 23 meeting.
District officials have the option to move forward with the proposal regardless of the public charter school designation under existing law and staff will be asking the board for formal approval of the plan during the Oct. 23 meeting.
GFPS launched a website on Oct. 10 with information on the proposal and details for the public to submit comments.
Jackie Mainwaring, assistant superintendent for elementary education, said that the idea grew out of discussions on how to address teacher shortages, provide better support, develop better teachers and offer more educational choice to the community.
“We don’t have enough teachers,” she said.
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Their plan is to choose an existing elementary school within the district and turn it into a learning laboratory.
Mainwaring and other administrators said the school hasn’t yet been selected.
The district is partnering with the University of Montana-Western’s education program for the proposed project.
Once the school is selected, the teachers at the lab school will be those with masters degrees, since they’ll also become adjunct faculty at Western.
They’ll go through an application process and be paired with student teachers from Western’s program or other university education programs.
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The student teachers from university programs will be hired by the district as paraeducators or teacher aides, which have also been in short supply, while their completing their degree program in an immersive educational setting.
Estee Aiken, an education professor at Western, told the GFPS board during their Oct. 9 meeting that she was notified on Monday that they had been awarded a $400,000 grant through the Montana Office of Commissioner of Higher Education for the pilot.
Those funds will be used to cover tuition for the students in the GFPS magnet school so when they graduate for their condensed three-year program, they’ll be debt free, Aiken said.
Aiken said there were some provision to require graduates to teach in Montana for a certain amount of time or be subject to paying back their tuition.
Rachel Cutler, who’s been with the district for 25 years, and Marni Napierala, who’s in her 29th year, said the proposal is built on conversations they’ve been having for years.
Cutler is a curriculum coordinator and Napierala is the elementary teacher on assignment. Both were classroom teachers, then instructional coaches and have both spent time as adjunct university faculty.
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Cutler said that they work with all teachers, but often focus on newer teachers.
She said new teachers aren’t always equipped for the complexities of the classrooms, from an instructional standpoint or student behaviors.
“We know experienced teachers are leaving in large numbers,” she said.
In late September, Luke Diekhans, GFPS human resources director, told the school board that the district hired 348 positions last year.
He said there were 50 retirements last year, with 20 of those being teachers. There were 232 resignations, he said, including 43 teachers.
Cutler said that they’re also challenged in recruitment and retentions due to negative messaging about teaching on social media, teachers being at or over their limits of what they’re physically and mentally able to accomplish and operating in a political landscape that doesn’t honor their knowledge or professionalism.
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Napierala said that as instructional coaches, they’ve had conversations about how it would be nice to have demonstration-style classrooms that other teachers could watch and be involved in watching seasoned teachers handle a classroom or test different styles or methods.
Since the state adopted new laws during the last session pertaining to public charter schools that allow local school boards to oversee them once approved by the Montana Office of Public Instruction, the conversation picked up again, Napierala and Cutler said.
Within the district, 44 percent of teachers are in their first three years, an “alarming number,” Napierala said.
That means those teachers need more support, leaving little support for teachers outside their first three years, they said.
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Cutler said that research suggests that the first five years are critical in a teacher’s career and that if student teachers can be paired with master teachers and spend more time in classrooms, they’ll be better prepared and have higher chances of success, which translates to better student achievement.
In the proposed lab school, the students would be able to complete their methods classes onsite in GFPS and be focused on the real time application of classroom learning, according to GFPS.
Cutler said that not all teachers are enthusiastic about the idea and there will be an application process for the lab school program.
For those teachers who don’t want to participate in the program or don’t meet the requirements, the district will follow the transfer options within the collective bargaining agreement.
District officials said current teachers would not lose their jobs under the proposal.
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Current students at the selected school will have the option to stay, but for those that want to leave, they could be moved to a nearby school or go through the district’s existing permissive transfer process.
The classrooms will be filled to state capacity and will use a lottery system to fill any available elementary student slots at the lab school, district officials said.
Mainwaring said, with board approval, they have a “doable timeline” to open the new lab school in the fall of 2024, with the student teachers in place in January 2025.
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Heather Hoyer, assistant superintendent for secondary education, said that the district will have to adopt memorandums of understanding with the teachers union for the master teachers who will be dually employed by GFPS and Western.
School board members said they encouraged the public to reach out to them about the proposal ahead of their Oct. 23 meeting.
“This may be well one of the most important decisions that this board makes on behalf of the community than anything that we’ve probably done in the last few years,” Bronson said.
