October 22-28, 2020
Bella Ladd puts her hands in the air as she gets excited for last Friday’s Storytime at the Philipsburg Library, which is resuming at 10 a.m. every Friday.
Drummond goes remote
The Drummond School Board voted to move to remote learning for one week at an emergency board meeting last Saturday night.
The school’s kitchen staff and other key staff are quarantined because of COVID-19, prompting the board to move to remote learning for one week. If it is still deemed necessary, the school board will extend the remote learning directive at a meeting on Thursday, Oct. 22.
“None of this is an optimal situation. I’m hoping that the longest we have to be out of school is next week,” Board Chair Scott Struna said at the Saturday meeting.
He emphasized that if it were any other staffing position, they would be pushing to keep the school open, filling it with substitutes where necessary.
Pushing to bring passenger rail service back to area
Granite County Commissioners will meet next Tuesday, Oct. 27 to discuss plans to join a passenger rail authority, which would help bring back passenger rail service in the southern part of the state.
According to Missoula County Commissioner David Strohmaier, the southern part of the state last saw regular passenger rail service in 1979. Over the last 41 years there have been various attempts to get passenger rail service going again, but one big piece has been missing, Strohmaier explained to the Granite County Commissioners last month— the institutional or organizational structure to move such a project forward.
No government agency or public institution currently oversees expansion of passenger rail service in the southern area of the state. A regional passenger rail authority would create a governance structure to research, seek or adapt funding and facilitate the implementation of an inter-city rail service in the southern part of the state.
In the absence of legislative leadership, counties can create their own rail authorities, according to the initiative’s website.
Substitute shortage could force school closure
With COVID cases on the rise, and the flu season also upon us, seasonal illnesses have a direct impact on local schools. But it is the lack of substitute teachers to fill in during the absence of regular teaching staff that was a subject of discussion at the Philipsburg School District Board meeting last Tuesday.
Philipsburg School Superintendent Kevin St. John reported to the school board that there were four positive cases of COVID at the schools currently, and that they recently had a day in which four teachers were absent from the schools, though not all were due to illness. He said that the schools used to have as many as eight substitutes that were ready to step in if needed, and that the district was currently down to only one substitute teacher. The school district has been regularly advertising their need for substitutes.
Just by coincidence, some of the people that had been regular substitutes at the schools had moved out of the area during the past year. While schools were closed for the summer, the district only managed to hire one person to work as a substitute for the new school year.
St. John said that Philipsburg School District pays $75 per day for substitute teachers.
Want to read the full story?
Click SUBSCRIBE at the top of this page.
Drummond goes remote
The Drummond School Board voted to move to remote learning for one week at an emergency board meeting last Saturday night.
The school’s kitchen staff and other key staff are quarantined because of COVID-19, prompting the board to move to remote learning for one week. If it is still deemed necessary, the school board will extend the remote learning directive at a meeting on Thursday, Oct. 22.
“None of this is an optimal situation. I’m hoping that the longest we have to be out of school is next week,” Board Chair Scott Struna said at the Saturday meeting.
He emphasized that if it were any other staffing position, they would be pushing to keep the school open, filling it with substitutes where necessary.
Pushing to bring passenger rail service back to area
Granite County Commissioners will meet next Tuesday, Oct. 27 to discuss plans to join a passenger rail authority, which would help bring back passenger rail service in the southern part of the state.
According to Missoula County Commissioner David Strohmaier, the southern part of the state last saw regular passenger rail service in 1979. Over the last 41 years there have been various attempts to get passenger rail service going again, but one big piece has been missing, Strohmaier explained to the Granite County Commissioners last month— the institutional or organizational structure to move such a project forward.
No government agency or public institution currently oversees expansion of passenger rail service in the southern area of the state. A regional passenger rail authority would create a governance structure to research, seek or adapt funding and facilitate the implementation of an inter-city rail service in the southern part of the state.
In the absence of legislative leadership, counties can create their own rail authorities, according to the initiative’s website.
Substitute shortage could force school closure
With COVID cases on the rise, and the flu season also upon us, seasonal illnesses have a direct impact on local schools. But it is the lack of substitute teachers to fill in during the absence of regular teaching staff that was a subject of discussion at the Philipsburg School District Board meeting last Tuesday.
Philipsburg School Superintendent Kevin St. John reported to the school board that there were four positive cases of COVID at the schools currently, and that they recently had a day in which four teachers were absent from the schools, though not all were due to illness. He said that the schools used to have as many as eight substitutes that were ready to step in if needed, and that the district was currently down to only one substitute teacher. The school district has been regularly advertising their need for substitutes.
Just by coincidence, some of the people that had been regular substitutes at the schools had moved out of the area during the past year. While schools were closed for the summer, the district only managed to hire one person to work as a substitute for the new school year.
St. John said that Philipsburg School District pays $75 per day for substitute teachers.
Want to read the full story?
Click SUBSCRIBE at the top of this page.
For the complete stories and much more, please subscribe to the Philipsburg Mail today.
Call (406) 859-3223 or e-mail mgr@pburgmail.com for subscription information.
Times Change
But you can still re-live our past with the Philipsburg Mail’s
searchable and ever growing list of available archives:
1908 • 1911 • 1932 • 1935 • 1936 • 1938 • 1939 • 2009 to Present
searchable and ever growing list of available archives:
1908 • 1911 • 1932 • 1935 • 1936 • 1938 • 1939 • 2009 to Present
