Creston’s New Administrative Team to Prioritize Supporting Teaching Staff
Creston School will start the year with a new principal and a new clerk and office/business manager
By Mariah Thomas
Cheryl Peterson will celebrate two major events on Aug. 27: her birthday, and her first day as Creston School’s new principal with students back in the building.
Needless to say, she’s excited about it.
“I get bouncy kids coming on in like, ‘Let’s do this thing!’” Peterson said.
Creston School has two new administrators at the helm as it’s starting the 2025-2026 year. Peterson was hired to take over the top spot as principal for the new year. And Gina McWilliam began as the school’s clerk and office/business manager just before the last school year ended in April.
While Peterson might be new to Creston School this year, she isn’t new to being a school administrator.
Originally from North Dakota, Peterson has her doctorate in educational leadership. She has taught grade levels from kindergarten through master’s students over the course of a 30-year career in education. She’s also been an administrator across the country and world, leading schools in states like Utah and in Mongolia, Indonesia and Sudan.
But it was Montana’s mountainous landscape and – more importantly – its people and culture that attracted Peterson to the rural Creston School.
McWilliam, on the other hand, is a newcomer in the education realm. She moved to Montana from California a few years ago (“a place that shall not be named,” she quipped) and had worked in law enforcement records for 25 years. But the clerk role at Creston matched her previous experience well, and she appreciates the small nature of the district.
The pair have quickly developed a strong working relationship.
“The two of us, surprisingly, work very, very well together,” Peterson said. “We’re of an age together, we have similar histories and backgrounds. We have similar ways of speaking that she understands me and I understand her, so I don’t think we could have asked for a better situation.”
As the pair start in their new roles, they said they walked into an “excellent” situation. Their goal — for now — is to keep the ship sailing as they start to learn what the rural district might need in the future.
“I want to know my staff,” Peterson said. “I want to understand how I can best support them and the families in the community and what is going to be best for Creston in the long term. And so I don’t have an agenda. I don’t have things that have to happen.
“My biggest goal right now is to support the community, to support the kids, to support the families, to make Creston an anchor, a support, a foundation in the community. It already is. I don’t want to break any of the things that have been fabulous going on.”
Teachers will return to the building Aug. 22 to engage in professional development. It’s an opening for Peterson and McWilliam to make inroads with their staff, and they hope the event will mark an opportunity for team building ahead of the new year.
While Peterson emphasized that supporting staff mattered to her, she also said part of what attracted her to the school was its individual focus on students. One thing she thought Creston did well was allowing students to “learn how they learn.”
Creston School serves students in kindergarten through sixth grade. Because of the school’s small size, she said staff can support students as students work to understand their own learning processes and preferences. Plus, with a small staff and school, it’s easier to provide a cohesive experience. Students can be assured their teachers will have similar approaches from one grade level to the next.
“This school has teachers that are all on the same road and kids that are all getting that chance to learn how to be themselves and learn how to work together and learn how they learn,” Peterson said.
Peterson said the district is pretty traditional — and she hopes to keep it that way.
“We’re about kids,” Peterson said. “We’re about making kids have all the opportunities possible to be the best they can be. Pretty simple, honestly. We like it that way.”
Creston students return to school on Aug. 27. Students and their families can attend an open house on Aug. 25 from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. to meet their teachers and see their classrooms ahead of the first day.
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.