BOZEMAN — Changes are constantly being made as we continue into this pandemic.
But one change caught parents in the Bozeman school district off guard when a school board meeting was canceled right before elementary schools planned to reopen.
“At the end of the day, our community is split on this issue and our staff is split on this issue, so it’s a challenge. It’s a challenge every day for us to acknowledge and respect everybody’s opinion and still try to move forward, and that’s in the best way that we can, and that’s what we’re trying to do,” said Steve Johnson, the deputy superintendent of operations.
Concerns from parents grew after the Bozeman School Board canceled their scheduled meeting on Monday. But board members say that meeting was never to discuss next week’s reopenings.
“The only two items we had were those two policy items, and one of them it turned out after we did the agenda setting, we’re not ready yet. We’re going to wait a meeting to bring that. So, then we were left with one policy series, which would have probably taken 5 or 10 minutes and then we would have been done,” Johnson said.
And neither does the meeting scheduled for Friday.
“We need to have a meeting because we have a personnel issue now, and so, that wasn’t on Monday’s meeting. It wasn’t planned on being on Monday’s meeting. So, now they’re going to meet on Friday on that personnel issue,” he explained.
The reopening is still scheduled as planned. But board members know parents do have concerns and are able to bring them up during public comment at the meeting.