Montana State Tax document shows that former MCPS Trustee (and Board Chair) Toni Rehbein was the president of Missoula International School - Also shows Martha Newell as vice president

1998 MIS Montana Corporation Document with the names of Toni Rehbein and Martha Newell

October 2025, 

Since the beginning of the closure in lease in 2004, the Missoula County Public Schools has not rrestored our public school to the rightful benefiicaries. The MCPS school district has had many MCPS Superintendents follow the corrupt superintendent, Jim Clark. They also, by continuing the lease to Missoula International School are therefore just as corrupt. Additionally, there have been many MCPS maintenance directors after that of Gary Botchek, that are also equally corrupt by the very fact that they will not take care of the Prescott School building, in fact, abondoning our valuable resourse and beloved school. This is my first update to this blog post. Unfortunately, this is what I and many others have had to endure for about 25 years. I really do think that Missoula County Public Schools is one of the most corrupt school districts in the nation.

Missoula International School Montana Corporation documents from 1998 show that former Missoula County Public Schools Board of Trustees Chairwoman Toni Rehbein had served as the President of Missoula International School shortly before being elected to the MCPS Board in May of 2004.

Rehbein did not reveal the information above during the 2004 election cycle but finally fessed up to her prior ties to MIS only AFTER she had advocated for the lease at her first MCPS Board Meeting in May of 2004.

Additionally, one can also observe in the above photo of a MIS  Montana Corporation document that Martha Newell served as Vice President of Missoula International School during the same year.

It is difficult not to notice the address of Martha Newell - the 900 block of  Taylor - only a couple of blocks from Prescott School.

As Martha Newell's home is so close to Prescott School it does make one wonder if there were actions taken behind the scenes by Martha Newell in order to help secure the lease of Prescott School to the Missoula International School in 2004. 

Of interest - Martha Newell is the partner of the former mayor of Missoula, Mike Kadas.

Of consequence is that there are more MIS Montana Corporation documents AFTER 1998 with the names of Toni Rehbein and Martha Newell (and, by the way, one or more with the name of Julie Lennox with Toni Rehbein - the long-time headmaster of Missoula International School).

Prescott School Missoula is of the opinion that more people need to know that former Missoula County Public Schools Trustee (and Board Chair) was the president (and vice president) of Missoula International School shortly before she was elected to the MCPS Board. 

For the reason mentioned, that is that more Missoula citizens need to know about Trustee Rehbein's ties to MIS,  PSM looked into how this post can remain at the top of the blog while still posting new posts. In the article, "How to Set a Post Always on Top in Blogger" the explanation states that one needs to set the date of the post to a future date. Changing a blog's date to one that has yet to come keeps the blog post at the top of that page, at least until the date you set passes. PSM has set the date at 7/11/20. It was originally published on 8/16/14. 

UPDATE: February 2026

I submitted a letter to the editor to the Missoulian which was printed in the Februay 3, 2026 edition. The letter is regarding Prescott School news. I mentioned this blog in the letter. I would like to say to anyone that comes to this blog as a result of the letter (or not) that I believe this is one of the most important posts on this blog. It reveals that Toni Rehbein, before running for the Board of MCPS was the hightest officer of Missoula International School! This is important as she was most likly the instigator of the MIS/Prescott School lease, or at least one of them. Please keep  this mind when going past Prescott School. Think of Toni Rehbein. And one sees the name of Martha Newell. Think of her, too as she was and I believe still is a close neighbor to Prescott School. Thank you!

I would like to encourage more people to start a blog and write about their experiences with Missoula County Public Schools. 
I'm sure there are a lot of good things going on in our schools , however, our family experienced a horrific school closure fraught with corruption in 2004 and I believe that MCPS corruption still permeates MCPS to this day. PSM was also witness to much that went on during the sale of Roosevelt School to St. Josephs School in 2005. Many of the same people or people that are connected to the same people that were involved with the closures are still making important (and in PSM's opinion corrupt) facility and program decisions negatively impacting Missoulians lives.

Post title and content edited - December 16, 2015

Edited also in October of 2025

LINK TO MISSOULIAN ARTILE - Missoula International School unveiling new facility long ago - When will this happen??

https://missoulian.com/news/local/missoula-international-school-unveils-designs-for-massive-new-school-building/article_e7c714af-820d-5989-8ad6-24514d2df2ed.html

LINK - Founder of Missoula International School's letter to the editor

https://missoulian.com/news/opinion/mailbag/on-a-positive-note-thankful-for-years-of-mis/article_f6b9b591-42e4-51b3-9d2a-00d6368da2fc.html


Above is a link to a letter to the editor written by Meg Langley, founder of the Missoula International School.

Meg is writing that she is thankful for the many years that the school she founded is still around.
She is pointing out the fact that MIS (Missoula International School) began at her house in 1995(as I'm writing this I forgot the exact year and I don't want to go back to the article - (ha!) she is proud that her school is still thriving.

Point of Fact - This letter by Meg Langley followed a letter to the editor written by Jeanne Joscelyn that laid out the history of  Prescott School going and even mentioned the founding of Missoula and the 150th anniversary of our city. In Joscelyn's letter, she encouraged the reopening of Prescott School.

2015 Letter to Missoulian - Re: Prescott School History and request to reopen Prescott

Throughout this year Missoula is celebrating its 150^th birthday.

In its early days a sawmill, Missoula Mills, was built near the Clark Fork, diverting water from Rattlesnake Creek.

Not far from this landmark and Missoula’s beginnings, is another, Prescott School.

In conjunction with Missoula’s centennial, in 1983, the Rattlesnake PTA published a booklet about the history of the area’s schools. Bonnie Malingo compiled Information on Prescott School, some of which follows.

“1891 marked the year a school was provided to meet Missoula’s growing pains in the Rattlesnake Valley.”   The original Prescott School started as the East Side School in 1891 in a grocery store on the corner of Harrison and Vine.

In 1893, the school district purchased land for $500 from the Missoula Real Estate Association on which to build another East Side School ( current location at 1100 Harrison) costing $4,000.

“In 1902, the Daily Missoulian reports, ‘East Side School was to be named Prescott School.’”

In 1948, Superintendent Porter, showed preliminary drawings of a newly proposed school building for Prescott. “In the spring of 1951 the new Prescott School was ready for occupancy.”

For many years, Prescott served 1-8^th grades. A variety of grade configurations were also used depending on the circumstances.

Prescott, a special school to many, was closed and leased in 2004 to the private Missoula International School. The lease will expire in 2017.  MCPS needs to reopen Prescott for its proper use of educating our public school students. Enrollment both in the Rattlesnake and city-wide is increasing and our schools are at capacity.

The section on Prescott history in the booklet mentioned above ends with the following sentence, “In closing, one of the finest things one can experience at Prescott is the tremendous interest and support from the parents and the public in the area.”

Jeanne Joscelyn

Prescott and neighborhood school advocate

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!)

How many days since that fateful day of March 25, 2004 at 1 a.m. when the MCPS Board of Trustees closed Prescott School

Often I have wondered how many days, not years, since our beloved Prescott School was closed.

In the wee hours of the morning of March 25, 2004, after many people had left the meeting at the South Avenue administration building, the Missoula County Public Schools Board of Trustees voted to close THREE schools in the northeast section of our city. 

The schools: Rattlesnake Middle School and Prescott School in the Rattlesnake Valley, and Mount Jumbo School in East Missoula.

If one goes to www.daycalc.appspot.com  one can find out this information.

According to the above website it has been 4,920 days since that disastrous vote that closed Prescott School which so negatively effected our city, our neighborhood, and our students.

Again, it has been 4,920 days since the closure of Prescott School in Missoula.