Prescott School is needed by Missoula County Public Schools!

Prescott School is needed by Missoula County Public Schools.  There is no doubt that Missoula's school system,and more specifically the Rattlesnake Valley, needs Prescott School, sooner rather than later. 

Prescott School was never intended to house a private school which it is unfortutuately now doing.

All of Missoula's public schools were built and maintained for our public school students.  Dangerous and sinister things, perhaps unintended (?) happen when a school district leases a public school to a private school. In some prescott school missoula posts one will find that one university professor estimated MCPS would stand to loses hundreds of thousands of dollars due to the lease as it would negatively effect the school district's funding from the state.

Additionally, Dr. Larry Swanson's demographic report alludes to a large increase in elementary enrollment for the district. 

A quote from the report states: "Elementary school enrollment fell from a peak in 1991 at 3,871 to a low of 3,186 in 2008 - a decline of 685 students.  This is expected to climb back to nearly 3,900 in 2017 and then begin a gradual decline before leveling out sometime after 2030.

MCPS Trustees had access to this report last year in 2011 when they voted to extend the lease of Prescott School to Missoula International School, howver, chose to ignore it.  This vote was a complete breach of trust by these Trustees.

Missoula International School also was given a 5 year lease.  This also increases the breach of trust by MCPS Trustees as according to the demographic report the years leading up to 2017 are years of large growth in the elementary student age group.

The need for Prescott School is made all the more obvious by the district's decision to build a 2-room modular at Rattlesnake School to help alleviate a capacity problem that was also known at the time of the MIS/Prescott lease discussions.

At the top of the page is a link to the demographic study by Dr. Larry Swanson commissioned by Missoula County Public Schools.
In other words, the school district Trustees have ignored and are continuing to ignore the advise for which they paid.











Dr. Larry Swanson's demographic report for Missoula County Public Schools