Simon Addresses Board, Asks for Retraction Letter

At the February school board meeting held on Tuesday, February 7, Cardwell School board member Levi Simon appealed to the Whitehall School Board to address inconsistencies in the letter sent to elementary students by the school the previous week. For background, the Whitehall Ledger had published an article announcing that Family Minded online had deemed the Cardwell School as the top elementary school in Montana. This was based on not only test scores but a plethora of other criteria. The Whitehall school responded with a letter to parents comparing Whitehall’s test scores with Cardwell’s, which has been a hot topic on social media and throughout the community.

Speaking as a parent and not as a representative of the Cardwell School board, Simon explained the OPI site has an error due to the sample size of Cardwell in comparison to Whitehall. His letter to the Board is on the next page as a Letter to the Editor. He asked that the Whitehall School Board send out a retraction letter; no determination on a retraction letter was made. Simon also noted that the letter has caused a “rift” between the two schools.

Whitehall Ledger owner Elizabeth Pullman noted that the article was not meant to cause any issue between the schools and was only one media outlet's opinion. Pullman also clarified that Family Minded had pulled their information from niche.com, not the OPI site and that it was based on a 2020 report.

Discussion on the four-day school week for the 2023-2024 school year continued with a tentative calendar being presented, though not voted upon. The school calendar committee is comprised of Rodney HEad, Britta Oliverson, Trish Scarborough, Julie Kieckbusch, and Laura McDonald. The committee suggested a calendar that is very close to the start/end dates of the current school year.

Teachers would start 8/16-8/17, with students beginning 8/21. Students would have no Fridays, though teachers would have some Fridays due to professional development days. Winter break would be from 12/22 to 1/1, Easter break would be a four-day span from Friday to Monday, and the last day of school would be June 6. A required 8100 minutes of instructional time would mean that class would start at 8 AM and end at 3:54 PM. The 21st-century after-school program would run Tuesday - Thursday for one hour after school and Fridays for a four-hour period. Fridays would require registration to the 21st Century program to assist so those in charge know headcount, food, and supply needs.

“ We’ve got good support from the teachers,” Head said in regard to the 4-day school week schedule planning. “It’s going to happen and we are ready to roll.”

IN OTHER NEWS:

• After 23 years at Whitehall High School, school clerk Patti Drake will retire at the end of this school year. Superintendent Hannah Nieskens thanked her for her years of service and stated she will be missed.

• Sheila Eiserer and Deidre DuBois were hired as substitute teachers. Jason Salvagni was hired as the 6-12 School Secretary; Michalah Sherman was hired as MS English Teacher for 23-24 school year.

• GoFan, a free service, will be utilized for eTicketing for sporting events, activity passes, and as a point-of-sale at the gate in the upcoming school year. Nieskens said the equipment should be available to test out its use on the 2023 Prom ticket sales.

• School Board elections will be run by Jefferson County this year, with Laura McDonald, Chad Hoover, and Robin Becker’s positions available for candidates.

• Nieskens requested the Board fund $20k for site survey work for the new daycare facility being placed on school property near the old gym. Funding was approved and will come from the interlocal school fund.

• Nieskens gave an overview of House Bills 203, 2014, and 344, as well as Senate Bill 235; all, as well as several others of the over 600 bills for education being proposed in the Legislature, could affect Whitehall.

LETTER TO EDITOR AS REFERENCED ABOVE:

Dear Editor,

I’m writing this letter in response to the letter Superintendent Nieskins sent home to the Whitehall Elementary parents, as well as the Letter to the Editor Mr. Reiff had in the February 8 edition of the Whitehall Ledger.

As a parent of two students who attend Cardwell School, I have two issues with these letters.

First, I find it very unprofessional and unacceptable for a school district or a member of the school board to share information pertaining to another school district. If the letter had only contained data for the Whitehall School to represent what an amazing job the Whitehall teachers are doing, I would have had no issue with the letter. I believe Whitehall School does have amazing teachers and I know they work very hard to provide the best school for the students.

The second issue I have is the data that was in the letters representing the Cardwell School for the 2021-2022 school year. The numbers presented showed that Cardwell School had 0% of its students testing advanced in the math portion of the assessment. This number was alarming to me because my son took these assessment tests, and I personally know that his test results showed that he tested advanced in the math portion.

My first reaction was to go to the OPI website and look for the assessment data. I accessed the OPI website from my phone and under a school district data dashboard, I was able to find the data for the Cardwell School. The data I saw was indeed the exact same as what was presented in the letters.

I then decided it was best to directly call OPI to see if they could help me get a better understanding of the assessment data that was represented on the OPI website. Eventually, I was forwarded to a man that worked at the help desk for the website. I explained my situation to him and he helped me understand where I needed to go on the webpage to access the assessment data.

On the homepage of the OPI website is an Assessment Scores tab. After clicking on the Assessment Scores tab, there is a new tab titled “Math and ELA Assessments Dashboard (Grades 3-8).” From this dashboard, filters can be applied to the displayed chart and there I could find the assessment data for the Cardwell School.

I tried to access this dashboard on my phone, and for some reason, the dashboard was not compatible. I then went to the website on a laptop, and from there I was able to get the dashboard to work. I found the assessment data for the Cardwell School for the last six fiscal years and by moving my cursor over the data for the 2021-2022 school year, a pop-up box appeared showing the percentages for the Cardwell School, as well as the number of students that were in each category for their assessment scores. I noticed that in some of the boxes, there was an asterisk, so I asked the person helping me what that meant.

I was told that Montana has a child identity law in place to help protect the identity of students. Due to the fact that Cardwell has a lower number of students that took the assessment tests, there is most likely too small of a sample size. They have a masking policy programmed into their website so certain data may be excluded from the charts to protect a student’s identity. The data in this dashboard representing the Cardwell School was significantly higher than the data that was presented in the two letters. I asked the gentleman from the help desk why there was such a difference between the assessment dashboard and the school district data dashboard, and I was told that he didn’t know why.

He stated that the data on the assessment dashboard he had shown me was the most up-to-date and correct information and that the data should be the same in both dashboards. He said it was a mistake that they weren’t the same and that they would look at addressing the issue.

I felt it appropriate to share this information with the Whitehall School so I attended the February 7 School Board meeting, and during the public comment section of the meeting, I presented exactly what I stated above. I felt that it would be appropriate for the school to send out another letter apologizing to the Cardwell School and to recognize that the OPI website showed different data than what was represented in the letter.

The next day I had a phone conversation with Mr. Reiff in which I also stated that I felt it appropriate he writes a new letter to the Whitehall Ledger addressing this issue.

I personally feel like there are several different factors to take into consideration when determining the type of environment a school provides for learning and child development. School assessment scores are one of those factors, but not the only one.

I believe both the Whitehall School and Cardwell School are assets to the community, and I hope for a better relationship between the two in the future.

Levi Simon

Cardwell, Montana