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School Election Ballots: The mail in ballots for the trustee election are due May 2. If you did not get a ballot but feel you should have please contact the Lake County Elections Office.

Lunch and Breakfast: Please pay your student’s breakfast and lunch bills. Letters went out this week and we want to do our best to work with families during these tough economic times. We can see about setting up payment plans. We are also set up to pay via credit or debit card through Infinite Campus. If you have questions please contact the office 644-2206.

Mid-Term 4th Quarter: Progress reports should be seen by parents by next Wednesday if you aren’t already monitoring your student on Infinite Campus. Students will be given the reports to bring home.

Library: May 4 will be the last day that materials can be checked out of the Charlo School Library. All Materials should be returned by May 24.

School Board Meeting: The regular monthly school board meeting is every third Tuesday of the month at 7 PM in the library except for June, July, August which begin at 8 PM. Agendas are posted no later than Friday before the meeting at the school, the Charlo Post Office, and the Dixon Post Office. Board packets are available upon request.

Question of the Week: Can you give a short update on any legislation that is passing that may impact the district?

There are a multitude of bills in the legislature regarding public education and each of them will have impacts once finalized. A big one in our area is the open enrollment bill. That bill has been amended with safeguards that allow home school districts with better ability to control who and how many students can enroll from other districts. The fiscal ramifications were not changed to date. Two other bills creating charter schools are being debated this week. One of those (562) has no accountability to anyone. It would literally allow any person to access public money and create a school. The other bill (549) does have items written into the bill which does require accountability for using public money to create charter schools. In my opinion those 3 bills do not help public education in Montana. On the other hand there are two bills which have the potential to make a difference for public schools. A bill was signed in to law last week which helps to address the teacher shortage by allowing retired teachers to return to work for up to 49% of their retirement pay without losing their full retirement benefit. The second bill which could help schools is a health insurance bill which would aim to create a larger pool of public school employees to reduce costs of health insurance (332). There have been several amendments thrown at this particular bill so it remains to be seen whether it will be ratified or it will actually have the impact it was meant to have after those amendments were written into it. There are other bills such as (518) which have been in the news. Public educators hope that cooler heads prevail with (518) and send it down river. Again, in my opinion, it’s bad for public education as it literally ties the hands of teachers, coaches, administrators, and school districts.

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