Kila School Starts New Year with Familiar Face Returning to Lead District
Liz English plans to bring a long-term vision to the rural district as she takes over
By Mariah Thomas
Liz English isn’t a new face at the rural Kila School — though she is new to her role as the district’s top administrator.
She previously served as the school’s principal before taking a job with Kalispell Public Schools’ human resources department. When the top job at Kila School opened in February, English knew she wanted to return, for reasons both personal and professional.
The personal: She has two children. One enters kindergarten this year, while the other will go into middle school. In the smaller district, both her children will have a chance to be in the same building.
And the professional: While she enjoyed working at Kalispell Public Schools, she missed being around the students. In her human resources role, she felt two steps away from them. She wanted a chance to be more plugged into what was happening with students.
It was, in fact, that desire for connection that sparked English’s interest in education in the first place. As a Montana State University student, she began studying business marketing.
“It was right when the Blackberry came out,” English said. “And everyone in my classes was just staring at their phones and not talking to each other, and it was a different kind of vibe than I was looking for for my life choice of what I was going to do forever.”
She switched her major to elementary education and found an improved culture, as students talked and interacted with each other in those classes more than in her business marketing ones.
The desire for driving and improving culture has served as a major part of English’s career. It pushed her from being a middle school teacher to wanting to tackle an administrative role.
“I foundationally think that kids need to want to come to school, so having an environment that’s driven on relationships, but also whole-school culture, is really important to me,” English said. “And that’s something that an administrator can steer and control, and at a small school, especially when you can get your community and your teaching staff and your students really involved in that, it’s a pretty special place.”
In the principal/superintendent role at Kila School, she hopes to give teachers the support they need to tackle creative lesson plans.
She also wants to oversee the implementation of Personal Competency-Based Education (PCBE) in the rural district. That approach gives students agency over their schooling experiences. English attended a Montessori school herself, and attested firsthand to the importance of that approach.
She and her staff attended Kalispell Public Schools’ Doris Mountain Summit over the summer. The summit, a two-day affair hosted at Flathead High School in June, focused on giving teachers the tools to bring PCBE into their own classrooms and districts. Leaning into PCBE also helps to bridge the gap between Kila’s middle school graduates and the environment they’ll walk into when they go to Flathead High School, since the high school already works with the PCBE model.
English also said she’ll work on long-range facility planning. With rising student enrollment and an outdated facility that makes it challenging to address safety issues and growing class sizes, the district attempted to gain voter support for an $8 million bond in 2024. That bond would have expanded the school. Those efforts stalled at the ballot box as voters overwhelmingly disapproved of the measure.
Even though the bond didn’t pass, the facility challenges persist. English said she hopes to address them during her tenure. She is beginning the process of long-range planning by creating a list of all the issues in the buildings and the cost of fixing them. Then comes prioritizing what must be repaired.
English takes over the district on a one-year contract, she said. After her first year, she could be eligible for a two-year contract. Her first contract day was Aug. 11. Students return to Kila School for the start of the 2025-2026 academic year on Sept. 2.
Five Flathead County school districts are primed to start the 2025-2026 school year with new leadership at the helm. Top administrators in Somers Lakeside, Swan River, Fair-Mont-Egan, Creston and Kila either retired or resigned at the end of the last school year. This story is part of a series focused on the new administrators in each district.