Editor’s Note: This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Flathead Beacon: Can you tell me a little bit about yourself and your relationship to the Kalispell Public Schools?
Jesse Schulz: My wife and I moved here about a year-and-a-half ago. We moved from Oregon, I was out there for work. We came out here and I have two kids in Glacier High School. One’s a freshman, one’s a sophomore. I’m 46, wife and two kids. I was born down in Hamilton and moved to Cody, Wyoming when I was 1. I went to high school down there and then got out of high school and went into the Air Force. From the Air Force. I went into Germany for four years. So I was over there, did my four-year stint in the Air Force. And then got out, and I really had no idea what I was going to do with my life when I came back. It just so happened, I sat next to this guy who was a retired Army colonel who was working with a headhunter that puts people that are ex-military, that are transitioning out, into Fortune 500 companies. I got a job about two months later with Applied Materials. I’ve been with them for about 23 years. My wife and I, we bought a house out close towards Foys Lake. Love to ski, love to golf. My wife and I are Christians. We’re pretty involved with our church and raise our kids that way.
FB: Why did you decide to run for the Kalispell school board?
JS: A good trusted friend of mine from church actually asked me to meet him for coffee a couple months ago. He’s pretty involved with the political realm here in Kalispell, and he says, ‘You know, I’ve known you for a little while, you’d be a great school board candidate.’ And I honestly thought, ‘That sounds terrible.’ But the more I thought about it, and doing a little bit of research to kind of what’s going on around in the school district, and ultimately, as a parent, my kids are in their teens and I kind of found myself getting a little complacent and complaining about a few things with the schools, that kind of thing. I thought, you know, I need to do my part. Step up and be part of the school board. And maybe, there might be a chance for me to improve things, or just be a voice that can be helpful, really, to the school board. That’s kind of where I’m coming from.
FB: What will your main priorities be if elected?
JS: School safety. I think that’s kind of a big deal. Over the last five years of this country, we’ve seen some pretty tragic events in schools, that kind of thing. It’s hard to know what exactly we have as far as protocols and implementation in elementary and high schools. The only thing I’ve gotten exposure to is Glacier. It’s hard to know what’s broken. It’s like, if you buy a house, you don’t know what’s broken until you move in. So, I think I’d like to be able to find out what the protocols and procedures are for, not necessarily lockdowns, but maybe engineering protocols to how you could get the building structured in such a way that would prevent potentials like that. So that’d be one thing. I think safety is a big deal.
Parent involvement is also a top priority for me. We have a Logan Health facility that’s getting in to the schools now, which is a good thing, I think. But especially for kids that are under 18 years old, parents should be aware of that interaction between the children and the hospital. I don’t really know, maybe there is great interaction as far as like, if a kid goes into Logan Health, that’s in the school right now and there is some interaction there, maybe they already let parents know exactly word-for-word what happened. But if it’s not, I’d definitely like to be a part of it to make sure that parents are involved, you know, because they need to be for children.
But not necessarily just with Logan Health. I think that parents should be involved a little bit more in the curriculum. What I’d like to see, actually, is the schools to be able to open up maybe once a month to have a couple of parents come into a few classes here and there, as just kind of almost a silent partner, to just kind of see how their kid’s class is going. I’d like see parents maybe sit in the back and not really ask any questions, but just watch how things go. Not disruptive, and not too many parents, and not too often, too, it’d be a burden on the teachers. Ideas like that, I think would be helpful. So parents can kind of see what’s going on from a day-to-day basis.
And then just pretty much traditional curriculum. Reading, writing and arithmetic. I’d like to see us keep the focus in schools on those main things. There’s, I think, in some schools, there could be some divergence away from that. I don’t know if it’s helpful to the children. Reading, writing, and arithmetic, I think is kind of the main thing. So academics really, ultimately.
FB: So when you’re talking about parent involvement with Logan Health, is that like, the nurse’s office? Kids are going in with, for example, a cut on their finger? Or is that something more?
JS: Well, I don’t really know. When I was growing up, it would be kids that, you know, fell down on the playground. Of course kids in high school don’t have that kind of thing. Kids with a cut or are hurt or injured, there’d be a nurse that would fix them up. But I think if kids go in there for something other than something that’s medical related, then I think if there’s some interaction between the nurse or the healthcare provider and the kid, I think that parents should be aware of that. If it’s not a cut or a bruise or that kind of thing.
FB: Like a mental health issue?
JS: Yeah, I think the parents need to be involved in that as much as academics. I just hate to see something occur there where the parents are kind of blindsided by something that’s happening at school they’re not aware of.
KPS Superintendent Micah Hill told the Beacon that while the district has been in conversation with Logan Health about bringing clinics into the schools, they have not moved forward with the proposal and there are no Logan Health clinics in Kalispell Public Schools. Hill noted that no medical provider in the Kalispell Public Schools is permitted to provide major medical care without parental consent.
FB: What do you think are some changes that need to happen in the district? What are some things you think the board has done well, or some policies and programs you’d like to see continued in the district?
JS: I think I could probably only answer one of those, honestly. The only viewpoint that I have into the district really is reading the notes from school board meetings, and that really only gives you a narrow view of what problems may arise. I think what they’re doing good – in my path to become a candidate, I had to go visit the district office, which is above the library. And I kind of felt bad for the people who had to work in there. It’s kind of an old, rundown building. I know that there’s some financial talks about how to move forward and get a new building and that kind of thing, and trying to figure out the finances for that, which in my view, I think that it’s just as important to keep a building up to date and secure for the kids as it is the people who actually work in the district. They have to spend all their time there as well, too. And I think it’s rightfully deserved that they have a place that’s not really rundown. And it is pretty rundown. So to answer your question, what is the district doing right? Looking at a new facility for the people who work for the district. I think it’s a good path. But to know what they’re doing wrong, from what I can see, I don’t see a lot of things that they’re actually doing wrong, to be honest with you. I just want to be there to help if there is something that I can help steer problems and aspects that need to go the right way. I want to be there to help.