GFPS officials update board on CORE School
Great Falls Public Schools officials gave an update on the CORE School at Morningside Elementary during the school board’s April 8 meeting.
The district is planning to move forward this with their first public charter school under a new Montana law, as officials at the state level debate which agency or legal processes to follow to implement the new law.
That debate is now before the district court in Helena, asking a judge to determine whether the Montana Board of Public Education or the Office of Public Instruction has oversight of the process.
Superintendent Tom Moore said that there was a hearing in the case in Helena on April 8.
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He told the board that he doesn’t “want anybody to be concerned” about the court case as the district will comply with the the appropriate law and any court decisions, but “we are opening the CORE School at Morningside regardless.”
Moore said the district has some questions about how some state funding will work for the new charter schools but that district staff was working with OPI on those details.
“It’s still not clear how much money is going to come back to charter school districts through OPI and the enrollment process,” he said.
Jackie Mainwaring, an assistant superintendent, said the court case “is not going to derail us from out work” and that the new CORE School is almost fully staffed, but are still hoping to hire another special education teacher.
She said the list of the new CORE School’s staff is posted on the district website.
Mainwaring said that the district opened the lottery last week for slots at the new school for students outside the normal Morningside zone.
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She said they’ve had more than 100 applications for those slots, which are all treated equally in the lottery.
There’s one lottery for slots in first through sixth grade, and a separate lottery for the kindergarten slots.
She said the CORE School’s enrollment will be capped around 300-350 students, with two classrooms for each grade level and about 22 students in the lower grades and about 30 in the upper grade classrooms.
GFPS updates school board on CORE School progress
Kim Skornogoski, board member, asked if there were fewer sixth grade applications since students may not want to transfer that late in their elementary years, could the district move that teacher to make another kindergarten class.
Mainwaring said that was an interesting idea that they’d keep in mind.
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The district has also hired their university cohort, which are teacher assistants who are also enrolled as students at the University of Montana Western who will:
- earn a paycheck by being employed as a teacher assistant with GFPS during the school day.
- receive tuition waivers to make college extremely low cost.
- complete a Bachelor’s of Science sprint degree in elementary education in three years (including summers).
- be taught their education-specific courses at the CORE School as part of the school day.
- be able to choose to take additional courses online through UMW or locally through GFCMSU.
- remain with a cohort group of other college students who will support and work with them as they earn their degree.
She said the first cohort included 13 teacher assistants, about half of whom who were already working within the district and wanted to become teachers or who were coming out of high school and entering the education program.
