BIG TIMBER — A debate over unifying the school boards and superintendents in Big Timber is taking center stage ahead in the upcoming school board election.
Currently, the community operates with separate boards and superintendents for its K-8 and high school districts. School trustee candidate Catherine Kirchner is pushing to combine them, arguing it makes financial sense amid declining enrollment.
Kirchner built a website https://bigtimberunified.com/ to share data on the financial impact of lower enrollment at Big Timber schools.
"In the last two years, at the grade school alone, we’ve lost 34 children and using the state calculation, formula, that’s roughly a quarter of a million dollars," Kirchner said.
Taxpayer Laura McKinnon supports examining the issue now rather than waiting.
"For the future of our schools, we’re going to be looking at problems, so I think we should be looking at it right now and asking questions as a community," McKinnon said.
Former county superintendent Susan Metcalf said unifying the schools has been discussed three times in 45 years.
"Each time we decided that it wasn't beneficial because of the problems that it would create to unify," Metcalf said.
Metcalf said unification creates a monumental task for the community.
"You have less representation by the taxpayers and each school has separate sets of problems and is very unique. So trying to meld that all together and make that work is a monumental task," Metcalf said.
While 40 of the 42 Montana school districts have already unified, Big Timber has not.
"Because Deer Lodge is the only school since the 90s that's unified. So they don't really even have much guidance on how we would go about the unification process, how we would meld two different school boards, how we would come up with one contract for two different districts," Metcalf said.
School board chair Yancy Terland wants to see more evidence before moving forward with the unification process.
"I want to see some evidence before I say, yeah, let's spend taxpayer dollars to get some true numbers. I want to see where it makes sense to me first," Terland said.
Voters will have to make a decision on the direction of the school board at the ballot box. The election is Tuesday, May 5.
