Lone Rock School is located in the scenic Bitterroot Valley in southwestern Montana. It is a small rural K-8 school district, a "district within a district" to its neighboring school of Stevensville. Many of the residents commute daily into Hamilton or Missoula, both towns 30-45 minutes away. There is also a high population of families who home school in district. We have high participation in our free and reduced lunch program, and many kids experience food scarcity at home. Lone Rock borders two other open enrollment school districts, Florence and Stevensville (both around 10 minutes away) so it constantly feels like we are trying to compete for students. Recently, Lone Rock has faced declining enrollment and with it reduced funds. It has been hard to retain and hire teachers, let alone maintain curriculum and technology updates. Enrollment has been steadily dropping, even as new construction and new families in the district increase.

I started working as a Kindergarten teacher at Lone Rock in 2017. This is the same school I went to K-8, so I am teaching with many of the same teachers who taught me, which has been an incredible experience. During my first two years at Lone Rock, we had two Kindergarten classes with 14-16 students each, for a total count of 30-32 students. Enrollment sharply dropped this past year with only 22 students enrolling, so we were reduced to one large class. This larger class size created some additional challenges, but saved the district money by not hiring another teacher.

Going into my third year, I wanted to participate more in our local union and school committees. I attend most board meetings, and am trying to become more involved to shape Lone Rock’s future. Unfortunately, it has been stressful to participate in negotiations and meeting that involve large scale decisions as there is a real feeling of disconnect between our board and the teachers. Our step pay scale for certified staff has not changed in many years, and we are currently one of the lowest, if not the lowest, starting salary in the state. Because of this, we are having a hard time retaining and hiring teachers.

This has been hard on me and the school, as I could see Lone Rock being my "forever school" but due to the salary it has become unaffordable for many to continue to work there. Teachers have an incredible amount of freedom in my daily lesson plans, activities, field trips, and in the general classroom, but it feels like innovation has stagnated due to an unnecessary amount of red tape and virtually no long term retention of new teachers.