Main points from June 26, 2008 Missoula Independent article on lease extension of Prescott School to Missoula International School

The following statements are from a Missoula Independent article written in June (June 26, 2008) by Patrick Klemz during the lease renewal discussions of Prescott School by the private spanish emersion school, Missoula International School.

   June 26, 2008News» Features

   Getting schooled

     The renewal of an MCPS building lease angers residents

        by Patrick Klem

• "Jeanne Joscelyn wants to keep abandoned neighborhood school buildings like the Rattlesnake’s Prescott Middle School available for future MCPS use."(This was the caption for the picture of Jeanne on the Prescott School grounds.)

Here is how the article starts - 

'Jeanne Joscelyn and Ross Best are like conversational pad thai.' 

The article goes on to say - 

The pair’s message, however, is one in the same. Joscelyn and Best serve as the mouthpiece for what’s informally known as “the Opposition,” a group of Missoula County Public Schools (MCPS) district residents highly critical of the board of trustees for its practice of leasing closed school buildings to private competition. The Opposition’s latest battles focus on Prescott, a Rattlesnake neighborhood middle school closed in 2004 and leased out to the Missoula International School that same year for less than $1 per square foot.' 

"One year remains on the International School’s five-year lease, but the MCPS board is already talking renewal. The topic first came up during a June 10 public meeting of the trustees, but a lack of quorum prevented the vote. With MCPS still working on a building appraisal, Opponents complain that trying to rush ahead a lease renegotiation now would be irresponsible,"

“You are trustees—entrusted with public school buildings. Your behavior has not been worthy of trust,” Best railed at the last board meeting. “It has, in fact, been disgraceful and this is shaping up to be one more disgraceful action.”

Joscelyn and Best suspect interested parties wanted to get the deal sewn up before the July retirement of Superintendent Jim Clark, a proponent of dispensing schools deemed as excess. But the superintendent says the June 10 agenda item intended to conditionally approve the lease and then let MCPS iron out details later in the year when the appraisal is finished. 

The Opposition came together during the similar Roosevelt School controversy, in which MCPS came under fire for the 2005 sale of another closed school to a Catholic education foundation after it had passed on a separate and higher offer.

Trying to avoid a similar result, Opponents began tracking the paperwork on Prescott back before its board-ordered closure.

The Opponents are concerned that selling schools like Prescott leaves the district standing short should it one day need more classroom space. The idea of public support for the privatization of local education also doesn’t sit well with many residents. UM mathematician David Patterson, a critic of the 2004 Prescott deal, points out that cheap leases don’t make fiscal sense when one takes into account the amount districts lose when students defect to private schools.

“There’s no rocket science here,” Patterson says.            “Doing nice things for private schools

is not a part of the public interest.”

District records show the current contract on Prescott costs the International School about half as much per square foot as Walla Walla University’s lease of the nearby Mount Jumbo School.

“We recognize the current base price is low based on the market value,” says Missoula International School trustee Matt Lunder. “The problem with their argument is that it assumes if the board voted to not extend our lease that the Missoula International School would say ‘Shucks, lets just send all of our kids to public school.’ We would just go somewhere else.” (blogger's note- Matt Lunder lived on Van Buren, just a couple of blocks from Prescott School. The enrolling of neighborhood children was a concern of some responsible MCPS Trustees during the 2004 lease discussions.)

Yet, Opposition members’ beef goes deeper still. They allege MCPS’s long-standing trend of favorable treatment toward the private school is a direct result of special interest engineering—something Best calls “rigged transactions.”

Joscelyn points to one person in particular: former International School board president and current MCPS chair Toni Rehbein. Though Rehbein recused herself from both the 2004 lease vote and the June 10 renewal item, she advocated extending the International School a new lease at various meetings and once queried publicly whether the lessee would go for purchasing Prescott outright.

The Opposition argues the ethical problems speak for themselves, though the situation does not technically constitute a violation of office. According to county attorneys, only official action can be cited as a conflict of interest under Montana code.

“When I was involved in the Missoula International School, my daughter was

in preschool,” Rehbein says. “I don’t have any personal interest in it at all.” (psm blogger - See MIS documents on lead blog post at beginning of blog to see the disingenuousness of this statement)

'One International School report from 2000 shows Rehein’s name circled numerous times and tagged with the commentary, “To whom is Toni Rehbein loyal?”

“The facts don’t support that. It’s not character assassination—we have documents,” Joscelyn responds. “This is just the truth.”

Some history from an early Missoula family who settled in the Rattlesnake area!

PART ONE – EARLY FAMILY HISTORY IN THE RATTLESNAKE VALLEY (PRESCOTT SCHOOL AREA)

The following is an excerpt from my grandmother’s family history, a 6-page typed document that she created in I think the 1960’s. My grandmother’s name was Ellen Nellie Tiffany McAlear.

This excerpt comes from page 3. The document is really about her mother and father’s lives, (Nellie May Magee Tiffany and Willard Tiffany- my great-grandparents), however, includes some of her personal history as well.

The reason why I’m including this history in a post on the Prescott School Missoula blog is because the histoy takes place in the Rattlesnake area, thus the Prescott School area of Missoula. My grandmother also told me that she attended sewing classes at Prescott School (of course it would have been the first Prescott). I’m not sure about where her other schooling took place in the Rattlesnake – she lived here until 1920 -something I need to look into since the info was not passed on to me.

Again, from page 3 of 6 of my grandmother’s family history includes early Missoula history, specifically lower Rattlesnake history follows - 

“…The next year they moved on to Missoula (1907). My mother was expecting another baby to arrive in June of 1908. Because of an unusual heavy snow during the winter and days on end of rain in the spring; the Missoula river {now named the Clark Fork} washed out the bridges leaving no Dr. care on the south side of the river, where my parents were now living. They had rented a home in Orchard Homes until I was born and they could find a place to buy. The water that went over the banks of the river circled the Tiffany home but all was well in doors. {This event is now known as the1908 flood} A girl had been wished for and there I was, and mother was doing fine, too.

 A home was bought up Vanburen (my grandmother’s spelling) St. near Rattle Snake Creek (again, my grandmother’s spelling). Dad built a screened out (my grandmother’s spelling) door kitchen near the big apple tree, in the back yard. Lots of home grown fruit and vegetables and fresh air and rest must have been all that was needed. "

Look for Part 2 of early living in the Rattlesnake by my grandma (whom I loved so much!)