Gov. Gianforte Kicks Off the School Year in Evergreen, Highlighting Community Partnerships

At the Evergreen School District, teachers have a first-day-of-school tradition, known as “A Day,” where they give students a chance to start the year with a fun activity to set the tone.

Rather than the usual rigamarole of syllabi or sharing a fun fact with the class before diving into a lesson, classrooms lit up as students at the junior high worked in groups to come up with events in U.S. history for each letter of the alphabet, guessed the names of their math teacher’s farm animals, and discussed the qualities of living creatures in science class.

And at the elementary school, students started the day off by walking a red carpet, complete with bubbles and a true celebrity guest: Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte, who joined Evergreen for the morning to kick off the school year and laud the district’s community partnerships as a model he hopes other Montana schools can follow.

“Those partnerships make students stronger,” Gianforte said during a press conference hosted at the school district office Wednesday morning. “They make families stronger, and they make communities stronger, and that’s what we want.”

The governor engaged in the press conference and a roundtable Wednesday morning, which featured voices from Evergreen’s school board, Kalispell Public Schools, parents and Hope Church — a long-term ally of the school district — along with Gianforte and Rob Lawler, the coordinator for the Office of Faith and Community-Based Services, which exists under the umbrella of the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services.

Representatives spoke highly of the Evergreen School District’s efforts over the past decade to bring those stakeholders together for the good of their students.

“Individually, each of these partnerships brings tremendous value,” said Laurie Barron, the Evergreen superintendent. “Collectively together, they create something even more powerful: a united community, dedicated to ensuring every child has the opportunity to succeed. At the heart of this work is a simple truth. When a community invests in its schools, it invests in its futures. Strong schools cannot succeed in isolation. They thrive when families, businesses, civic organizations, faith-based communities, higher education, public safety, elected leaders and community members work together with a shared purpose.”     

She, and those at the roundtable, pointed to several examples of the Evergreen School District broadening the scope for its students through the relationships it has built. For instance, when Glacier High School’s football team won the state championship last year, the players came to visit with Evergreen’s students, painting a picture of success for them and talking with the younger students about the importance of getting involved in extracurriculars.

Over the last four years, the district has also prioritized inviting parents and Evergreen residents to the school via the work of a community council, made up of parents and Evergreen leaders. The council has hosted activities at the schools, like family movie nights, for people to participate in. And the school has invested in a family and community engagement liaison to work alongside the council, too, resulting in the district connecting 870 families to around 2,300 individual services, from housing to healthcare to transportation.

At the roundtable and following press conference, Barron and Gianforte also highlighted the long-term partnership the school district has built with Hope Church, a non-denominational church located in Kalispell. Barron and the church’s community life pastor, David Halliburton, emphasized the partnership does not mean the church is promoting its values at the school.

Instead, Barron likened the relationship to the church “adopting” the Evergreen School District. Over the past 12 years, when the school district has needed something, Halliburton and the Hope Church congregation have stepped up to help. Halliburton said the church has created the Wolverine Den, an incentive area for students to use during lunch recess. It also upgraded the gym’s sound system; its members volunteer at events; and the church hosts monthly appreciation luncheons for teachers at Evergreen — all of it part of a much longer list of ways the church has supported its local school district. Both Halliburton and Gov. Gianforte said they hoped shining a light on how the partnership worked would encourage other churches to consider “adopting” school districts in their areas, too.

“Our dream at Hope Church is that we would go beyond one church and one school, and our vision is for churches throughout this great state of Montana to adopt a school,” Halliburton said. “Not to promote an agenda — not to promote an agenda — but to serve. For the last 12 years, Hope Church has tried to live out one conviction: don’t just tell your community you love them. Find a way to serve them and be difference makers.”

In fact, for some of the roughly a dozen junior high students, who said they were tapped to attend the press conference and meet the governor thanks to their good behavior at the school, the impact of Hope Church on their schools came as a surprise.

“At first, I didn’t know the church helped with the Wolverine Den,” said Mykel Lavina.

Mykel and her brother Jaykob had their first days of seventh and sixth grade, respectively, yesterday. The pair said meeting the governor felt exciting — Mykel said she planned to brag to her friends about it — but more than that, they looked forward to kicking off a new school year of learning. That palpable excitement about the start of a new school year is something the governor said he, too, remembered from his own first days of school, and his children’s.

“I actually remember the first day of school for our kids more than I remember mine,” Gianforte said. “And it was a big deal. I mean, ‘cause they were in our full-time custody up until that point, then you get ready to turn them over to somebody else, and that was a little scary too. But education is the path to a brighter future, and I’m just excited that I could be in Evergreen on the first day of school here.”

Cayuse Prairie School, Columbia Falls Public Schools, Creston School, Deer Park School, the Fair-Mont-Egan School District, the Helena Flats School District, Kalispell Public Schools, Marion School, Olney-Bissell School, Pleasant Valley School, the Smith Valley School District and Whitefish Schools joined Evergreen in starting this week. The Bigfork School District, Kila School, Swan River School, West Glacier Elementary School and West Valley School will have their first days next week. Somers Lakeside starts after Labor Day, with Sept. 8 slated for students to return to the school buildings.

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