Big Sky, Past and Future
New High School a Triumph for Big Sky
The opening of Lone Peak High School is a landmark moment for the Southwestern Montana community.This story is part of a series about Big Sky produced by University of Montana School of Journalism students in collaboration with NewWest.Net. Video below by Eric Oravsky.By Kimball Bennion, Guest Writer, 8-29-09
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| Above: Students stand in front of the old Ophir School. Middle: Anne Marie Mistretta, Superintendent of the Ophir School District. | |
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When Big Sky residents gather Monday to celebrate the opening of the new Lone Peak High School, it will mark the culmination of an arduous campaign to create an institution that could change the nature of the community.
No longer will Big Sky teenagers be subject to the hour-long drive along windy, dangerous Highway 191 to get to school in Bozeman. No longer will families be faced with the unpleasant choice of moving away, home schooling, or putting their kids on the bus nine months of the year. So many chose the former that the issue threatened to stunt the evolution of Big Sky.
“It’s a weird culture to live in a world in which there are no teenagers,” said Barbara Rowley, a long-time resident and secretary of a non-profit organization called Friends of Big Sky Education. Rowley and her group helped raise funds, garner local support and address the daunting legal and political obstacles to building a new high school.
Big Sky has had a K-8 school district since 1912, and anyone within that age group went to Big Sky’s Ophir Elementary School. But after eighth grade, the situation got a little messy. Big Sky’s high school students belonged to the Bozeman school district, making their nearest high school option Bozeman High School.
Mark Goode, the treasurer and one of the founders for Friends of Big Sky Education, said his daughter Kelly was a key inspiration behind the group’s formation. Like every other Big Sky parent, Goode had to make that pivotal high school decision.
“We were faced with the option of either moving to Bozeman, sending Kelly away, or home school,” Goode said. And to his daughter’s chagrin, they chose home school.
“None of the other options for us were practical,” he said.
Of course, the most practical choice would have been to build a high school in Big Sky, but there were a few hurdles to get over first.
The first hurdle was the law. Montana had established a moratorium on forming any new school districts in the state, and in order to build a new high school, they had to form a new district that went beyond the eighth grade.
Goode, Rowley and other Big Sky residents began lobbying to in Helena to allow Big Sky’s school district to expand to include a high school, rather than forming a new district. During the 2005 legislative session, a bill that would have allowed existing districts to do this passed in the Senate, but it was voted down in the house.
And that introduced Big Sky to its second hurdle. Big Sky represented about 17 percent of the Bozeman School District’s bonding capacity, and losing Big Sky meant losing money for a new school in the Bozeman district. It also meant losing Big Sky’s tax revenue – about 13 percent of Bozeman’s total.
Bozeman wasn’t ready to let go of Big Sky that easily, and Big Sky’s 2005 bill died in the House partly because representatives from the Bozeman House districts voted against it after the Bozeman School District voiced their opposition.
After the first bill failed, Rowley, Goode and Big Sky resident Loren Bough formed FOBSE. Big Sky needed a unified voice that could say that they represented Big Sky’s desire for a high school, Rowley said. With 350 members, FOBSE began getting ready to take another run at the state legislature’s next regular session in 2007.
The new Senate bill would allow them to expand their district based on their distance from the nearest high school. This time, the bill also gained Bozeman’s support after it included provisions to require that Bozeman’s loss of Big Sky’s tax revenue would be paid back.
Rowley also said that a few “hand of God” moments may have helped the new bill gain traction.
In September 2006, a propane truck overturned on Highway 191, shutting down the road for a day. Shortly after, another accident involving a high school-aged boy also happened on the same highway. Neither accident was fatal, but they were enough to cause people to take notice, Rowley said.
Bozeman’s bond to build their new school, one of the reasons Bozeman’s school district was against Big Sky leaving, also passed, which may have loosened Bozeman’s stance on the issue the second time around.
In April, the House overwhelmingly passed the new bill, and Big Sky voted to expand their district to include a new high school in May.
Lone Peak High School was built as an addition to Ophir Elementary, and is due to open August 31 with 18 enrolled students. Much of the money was raised locally, and despite some bumps in that process – including dropping enrollment due to the economy, a few staff cuts, and a missing $900,000 pledge from Yellowstone Club founder Tim Blixseth – the opening is moving ahead as scheduled.
Goode’s daughter, Kelly, will be its first and only graduating senior for the class of 2010.
Superintendent Anne Marie Mistretta said the high school has kept many Big Sky families from having to move away, a move that would be especially hard in the middle of a recession.
“Now, it (attending in Bozeman) would be impossible for a lot of families because in this economy, families can’t afford two homes,” Mistretta said. “We did this in the nick of time.”
Hear from Kelly Goode, the lone senior at Lone Peak High this year, below. Video by Eric Oravsky.
This story is part of the Big Sky, Past and Future series, produced by the University of Montana School of Journalism in collaboration with NewWest.Net. Click on the headlines below for previous stories and check back for new installments at NewWest.Net/BigSky
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Comments
The tuition from boarders from out of district keeps the budget healthy. Big Sky could have a hell of ski team. A coed basketball team. With boarding school kids, even more activities and classes are offered. The model works. I think there are a more than two small high desert high schools in Oregon that readily take in boarding kids. Mitchell and Paisley come to mind. There are urban parents who have kids that would benefit from the experience. And people who could use the income from having a boarder, as well as what it adds to their schools. Especially a school in a ski town. The Big Sky High has a bright future because they have yet to entertain all their options.
As far as Blixeth: what he says and what he does are diametrically opposite. Don't hold your breath. But there is someone out there bigger, better and more interested than Blixeth who will come forth down the road. Big Sky is a place people will believe in and they need an experienced, ready work force, and those come with children most of the time. It will be a better place with kids and families, and family wage year around jobs. The place will gain a soul. It needs one.
Most of the kids at Lone Pine will probably be from the service class, not the wealthy "starter castle" people, but it's a good opportunity for the wealthy kids to learn about "the real world", too.
Great story. What a perfect place for a modern-day Rousseau to teach!
The one thing I know about public education is this country spends hundreds of billions on it, and the results either do not get better or they decline, each year. My state has a high school graduation rate of 60%+-....a piss poor result for the effort and treasure. So, the time to think out of the box is here and now. The whole cloth of starting new is such a blessing for Big Sky. I hope they can make the best of it. Make it special. Make it effective. Make it fun. Make it hard work. Make it worth something in the end. Think out of the box. Bring radical new ideas to finance and teacher pay. Show the world what thinking, caring, smart people can do with their opportunity to begin something new. And you don't need Blixeth money to do it. If your ideas have merit, prove themselves, there is someone out there in charge of a trust somewhere who will pay you to expand and improve the education model. The kids will thrive and the community will be proud. The danger would be if it worked so well as to attract too many people. That happens, you know.
And this is a public school. It might follow the pattern of many other small, Class C high schools (although it is still smaller even than that). When Great Falls was spending $6000/year per secondary student, Highwood (with 30-40 students - grades 7-12) was spending over $12,000, and offering AP courses, had state championship sports teams, and even the occasional National Merit scholar. This is completely doable. The only requirement is that the community work together, and don't let the state bureaucracy dumb them down. There are dozens of such successes in Montana, already - often, to be sure, in or near the resort towns, but Highwood is pure farmers, with some residue of artists and craftspeople. It's all about taking responsibility for one's own community.
I just need somoene who can actually fix my computer.
Every time I start my IE it takes nearly 4 minutes to show up on screen :(
I have also been hearing a interesting clicking sound coming from the computer itself. What does that mean?