_______________________________________________________________________ Someone sent me a link the other day to a very interesting news piece from KBZK in Bozeman, MT. – ‘Bozeman ranks #1 for strongest micropolitan economy’. That’s the strongest micropolitan economy in the nation, not just the state. As the report explains: “According to Policom, an Economics research firm, Bozeman is ranked number…
_______________________________________________________________________ Today E-City Beat received the following letter written to the Great Falls Public Schools Board of Trustees. We are respecting the letter writer’s request to remain anonymous. “To whom it may concern, I have just called my son out of classes for today due to dangerously low temperatures. This is something I should not…
_______________________________________________________________________ After a few anxious days of presumably running around like chickens with their heads cut off, local school district administrators concluded that they needed to further explain, or make excuses for, the horrendous graduation rates report issued by the Montana office of Public Instruction; Great Falls High School 75.8% and CM Russell High School…
_______________________________________________________________________ On January 10 the Montana Office of Public Instruction announced “record high graduation rates for Montana in 2018”. In today’s Great Falls Tribune, January 29, one of the headlines on the front page is “Graduation rate of GFPS students in 2018 dropped”. Recent data from City-Data.com shows the Great Falls’ poverty rate above the…
_______________________________________________________________________ Today, the Tribune reported what some people learned last weekend; the Great Falls Public School District has only one remaining candidate for the new superintendent’s position. With the assistance of the Montana School Boards Association, (for which GFPS payed MSBA $8,000 of taxpayer money), the field of seven applicants required to respond by the…
_______________________________________________________________________ “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by…” …their political party affiliation or ideological leaning? …their level of hatred or support for Trump? Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream was that we would…
_______________________________________________________________________ Great Falls High School 75.8% graduation rate? Are you kidding me? The numbers are actually worse than what we previously reported in an E-City Beat article. According to the Great Falls Tribune this morning, the Montana Office of Public Instruction announced that the combined graduation rate for the Great Falls Public School District is 80.08%….
_______________________________________________________________________ Will the new GFPS Superintendent be the same old, same old? Recently the USA Today Network, aka the Great Falls Tribune, reported that a “Superintendent ‘Meet and Greet’ set Sunday”. The field of applicants has been reduced from seven to three, and the finalists will be presented to the public at the Paris Gibson…
_______________________________________________________________________ On Friday, January 4, last week, I hand delivered a request for public information to the Cascade County Attorney’s office regarding employees at the Cascade County Sheriffs Office. The names of the CCSO employees listed here were included in the FOIA because several reliable sources provided information that the CCSO employment status of these…
_______________________________________________________________________ It is never wrong for local citizens to stand up and speak up in order to hold local public officials and institutions accountable and to keep them honest. Yet some folks in Great Falls still think that any criticism of our so-called “leaders” and public policies is somehow wrong, even damaging to our community….