MCPS: School board wrong on pay raise - letter to the editor by Rose Horton on March 17th, 2013

Click on the link below to read Rose Horton's letter to the editor to the Missoulian regarding Superintendent Apostle's pay raise.  The letter was printed on Sunday March 17th, 2013.

MCPS: School board wrong on pay raise

Trustee Jim Sadler commented with information on the funding of the raise is included in the comments section at the end of the article.


msw agrees with Rose's opinion of the school district and thanks her for writing her letter.

Her letter mentions the school closures that happened under the last superintendent. Our family was a victim of these closures. Rattlesnake Middle School, Prescott School, and Mt. Jumbo School were closed, all schools in the northeast corner of Missoula. There were actually three schools that were closed, in 2004, not two as Rose mentioned. I can see how one would only mention two as Rattlesnake Middle School is now Rattlesnake Elementary.

After traveling out to Mt. Jumbo for K-3 and attending Prescott School my child was then able to finally walk to the neighborhood school a couple blocks away as did his siblings before him. After only a 48 day period Rattlesnake Middle School was closed. Words cannot describe the devastation that was felt by not only our family but many others. This betrayal by malevolent school board members will most likely be felt for a lifetime.

Mt. Jumbo was a nice school; however, it was a 2 mile trip to get there. Besides it was built to serve the East Missoula student population, not the Rattlesnake area's children.  And Prescott School in the lower Rattlesnake was a WONDERFUL school (see sister blog prescottschoolmissoula.blogspot.com). A responsible Trustee suggested that the district create a K-8 system in the northeast corner of Missoula as it would have been less radical than the recommended closures.  I would not have minded if a middle school was relocated there for the Rattlesnake children. But to bus all 6-8 grade children on the north side of our city to Washington and C.S. Porter middle schools was a reckless, irresponsible, and cruel decision. The cost of these closures was not figured out ahead of the decision. Just one example of the ramifications of the closure which has to do with funds; The removal of all the state of the art science equipment from the science room at RMS was approximately $10,000!! This information was requested by a citizen and cost about $85.000 to process the request by the district. Not even the playground equipment at Rattlesnake was included in closure costs 

Can one imagine the true costs of the closures when costs such as the above are considered?! I just recently found out that the district filled in the band pit in the band room at Rattlesnake School - how much did this cost? 

Perhaps some citizens are unaware that the district just built a modular at Rattlesnake School due to overcrowding - But did NOT discuss re-opening Prescott - which is located just down the road. In fact, the principal at Rattlesnake told a citizen that opening Mt. Jumbo and/or Prescott School was not an option when discussing the overcrowding issue. Who told him this?

I am thinking that real troubles for MCPS in regard to facilities began when Missoula joined other cities and transformed our neighborhood K-8 school system into an elementary and middle school model back in 1981-82 I believe.
But in more recent years, Superintendent Vagner (sp?) started the leasing of our public schools to a private school; St. Josephs lease of Roosevelt in the late '90's. I have heard that she was once a nun. In my opinion this would have been a conflict of interest for her to be involved in this transaction.

Then Superintendent Clark came onto the scene in 2002. He caused more harm to our school infrastructure by closing the schools mentioned above and also selling Roosevelt. It was no secret that he also attempted to close Hellgate High School. During the 2004 closures a parent asked Clark what his plans were for Hellgate High School. He said, "My plan is to close Hellgate." I'm not sure how Hellgate slipped from the grasp of Clark; however, I'm glad it did.

When I read that Superintendent Clark was retiring I shouted for joy. Perhaps my problems would go away (somewhat). But the joy lasted less than a minute because I knew who was on the Board and that the misery would continue.

There was some hope that a new superintendent could come in and help to clean up the messes of Vagner and Clark. We all know now that this was not meant to be as there has been no cleaning up but more messes.

As Rose pointed out these Trustees are clueless about why we the public are upset over the superintendent raise and the lack of supplies for the district among other concerns.

There is no hope for them - if they cannot understand the problems we have now they need to be voted out of office as soon as possible.

For now we need to vote AGAINST REHBEIN, TOTH, BIXLER, AND LEMM THIS MAY.

Thank you again to Rose (the name of my great-grandmother) for writing her letter. 

edited on March 23, 2013 

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