I work in an urban school district that not only serves the urban population of Kalispell, but the high school district covers many of the surrounding rural areas as well, providing a student population with somewhat diverse backgrounds.  This gives our community schools a wide range of socio-economic backgrounds with some schools over 40 percent of students qualifying for free and reduced lunch.  

I have been teaching for over 20 years, and over the last decade have been serving with our local KEA union negotiations committee negotiate CBA's with the school district.  During this time, I have become aware of other members' needs and concerns when it comes to making a living as a teacher.  Our union does have a mentor program that helps a lot with the teaching side of things, but the financial side has me worried.  Often I see new teachers questioning if they can afford to become a teacher as they start off low on the salary matrix and are required to take on more college graduate coursework to move across the matrix to get to a point of making enough money to pay the rent and bills.  

I have decided to try to help bring about any changes that makes it more affordable for new teachers to start their careers.  I began with small things like reducing union dues for their first three years,   Lately, I have discovered that many school districts in Montana offer work force housing of various kinds to help attract and retain quality teachers to their areas.  I feel like our district could really benefit from investing in workforce housing to help teachers who need assistance just finding a home when relocating, as well as young teachers who are looking to get a start in our very expensive housing market.  So my project will be to persuade the leaders of Kalispell School District to start a workforce housing project for new teachers.