Happy Tuesday, Beacon readers! Mariah Thomas here with your Daily Roundup and oh man, I cannot quite believe all the chaos of the 2026 election cycle has come to an end. After such a rush the past couple months, this reporter has a little bit of a void in her life that feels like it needs filling — though the legislative session is primed to arrive quickly, and I’m feeling that squeeze as legislators head to Helena this week for orientation, where they’ll select leadership tomorrow.

Outside of politics-land (where I have taken up a long-term rental since September) there has been a lot happening around our local schools. Here are some of the items I’ve had my eye on.

Kicking off with some good news, you avid Daily Roundup readers might remember Kristopher Schreiner, the Kalispell Middle School teacher who won the Centennial Bell Montana History Teacher of the Year award earlier this year. Schreiner was honored yesterday on the anniversary of Montana’s statehood in a ceremony where some of his students traveled to the state capitol building in Helena and got to ring Montana’s Centennial Bell. One of my TV colleagues, Jonathon Ambarian with MTN News, had a great feature on Schreiner and his visit to Helena.

Up in the northern part of the valley, the Whitefish School District is back to the drawing board on its superintendent search, hosting preliminary Zoom interviews for a slate of five candidates tomorrow.

A refresher: Whitefish Schools mounted a search for a top administrator beginning last November, after Dave Means, a fixture in the district who had served as superintendent for six years, announced he’d step down at the school year’s end. The board went through a selection process and had picked Dr. Jennifer Fee to hand off the ropes to, but after Fee declined to take the job following a failed negotiation process, the district ended up tapping one of its own, Lisa Bloom, to serve as interim superintendent for this school year.

According to an agenda for tomorrow’s meeting, where the preliminary Zoom interviews will be conducted, the board plans to select and announce finalists following those interviews. Finalists will be invited to Whitefish Schools for “in-person interviews and meet-and-greet sessions with staff and community members in late November or early December.”

In Columbia Falls, the board successfully submitted its charter school application to the Board of Public Education ahead of an Oct. 30 deadline just a couple weeks ago. The district is one of four in the state that submitted an application for the Board of Public Education’s consideration this year. In neighboring Lake County, the Polson School District also submitted a charter school application this fall.

The Columbia Falls School District’s application pitches a chance for Columbia Falls students to learn skilled trades and earn credentials while still in school. It’s the district’s second ask for charter school approval, as it first pitched the Columbia Falls Trades Academy last year. Students would learn framing, plumbing, electrical work, HVAC and full tiny home construction during a four-day school week, with Fridays reserved for internships and enrichment opportunities. The offerings would first be available to high schoolers, with plans to expand and include students in seventh and eighth grades in the future.

Last year, the Board of Public Education urged the board to refine its proposal and resubmit it with more explicit partnerships laid out. It returned an application this year featuring a Flathead Valley Community College Collaborative Partnership as part of the Academy’s offerings. The application also had letters of support from Don “K” Whitefish, Rugged Ridge Contracting, Kalispell Auto Group, Acutech Metalworks, the Flathead Building Association and Montana Heritage Home Builders outlining their support for the project, sharing their needs for workers and intentions to participate via offering internships and the like for students.

In Polson, the district pitched the Polson Connections Charter, which would serve students in grades 6-12. If approved, the district would offer a Career & Community Connections pathway that would emphasize work-based learning and dual enrollment with partners like Salish Kootenai College and Flathead Valley Community College. It would also offer a Cultural Connections pathway, which would build upon the district’s existing Indigenous Immersion program. Both pathways would be bolstered with personalized, proficiency-based learning, according to the application. And at the middle school level, the district pitched an “intentional entry point into the district’s personalized learning model, connecting flexible and blended learning with career exploration, CTE, STEAM, work-based learning, cultural learning, and community partnerships.”

If approved, both districts would hope to open doors to their charter schools for the 2027-2028 school year. But before that, the state’s Board of Public Education will review and evaluate each proposal ahead of January, when it plans to choose which schools to approve.

And as we look ahead to the looming legislative session, I’ve also got an eye on school funding. A constant source of consternation for school districts locally and statewide in recent years, the legislature will meet this spring following a long year (and some change) of work from the School Funding Interim Commission, which saw several suggested tweaks to Montana’s school funding formula. In the coming months, I’ll be watching closely to see which of those changes may come to fruition, and tracing what it will mean for school districts here.

Whew — that’s a lot! Those big-ticket items are the ones that are front and center on this education reporter’s radar… but this is definitely a non-comprehensive list of all the goings-on in the Flathead Valley’s 19 local school districts.

Nonetheless, with that breakdown, Mariah Thomas is over and out. Onto the rest of today’s Daily Roundup.