Great Falls Public Schools

Great Falls Public Schools
Great Falls, Montana United States
District information
Type	Public School District
Motto	Great Falls. Great Schools. Greater Tomorrow.
Established	1886
Superintendent	Tammy Lacey, M.A.
Accreditation	Montana Office of Public Instruction National Association of Schools and Colleges Regional Accreditation Association
Schools	21 (2010-2011)
Budget	$100 million (2010-2011)
Students and staff
Students	10,500
Teachers	807
Staff	600
Other information
Website	http://www.gfps.k12.mt.us

The Great Falls Public Schools (also known as School District #1) is a public school district which covers the city limits of Great Falls, Montana, in the United States. As of March 2010, it was the second-largest school district in the state of Montana, and the third-largest employer in the city of Great Falls.

The city's public school system was established in 1886. That year, the city opened the Whittier Building (later known as Whittier Elementary School) and began holding ungraded educational instruction for all students there.Great Falls High School, the city's first high school, was founded in the fall of 1890 by the city of Great Falls after four teenage girls (newly arrived in the city) asked to receive a high school public education. "Junior High School", later known as Largent Elementary School, opened in 1918 and was the city's first junior high school. The city's second high school, Charles M. Russell High School, was built in 1964 and opened in the fall of 1965. Skyline Elementary School opened in 1970, and as of 2015 was the last school building constructed in the school district.

The school district weathered a deeply divisive 15-day teachers' strike in 1975 in which class size and pay were the primary issues. A 29-day strike occurred in 1989. In the 1990s, the school system began devolving responsibility for school policy and operations to the local schools, and struggled with finding the right balance between centralization and decentralization.

In 1992, the school system was involved in an open records lawsuit that went all the way to the Montana Supreme Court. On September 10, 1990, the GFPS board of trustees met privately to discuss a report regarding collective bargaining negotiations with the Great Falls Education Association. The board rejected the report without discussion at its public session, at which time the local newspaper, the Great Falls Tribune, sued—arguing the private meeting was a violation of the Article II, Section 9, of the Montana Constitution (a particularly strongly worded provision that gives citizens the right to observe deliberations and examine documents at public meetings). GFPS attorneys argued that state law provided an exception in the case of collective bargaining negotiations. A state district court ruled in favor of the school district, but a state appellate court overturned that ruling and held the state law's collective bargaining exception to be unconstitutional. In 1992 in Great Falls Tribune Co. v. Great Falls Public Schools, the Montana Supreme Court upheld the appellate court, concluding, "The collective bargaining strategy exception is an impermissible attempt by the Legislature to extend the grounds upon which a meeting may be closed."

...
Wikipedia