Community Focus: A great educational leader

I was very pleased with your recent front-page article describing the changes that have taken place at Hays-Lodge Pole School under the supervision of a new school board and a highly qualified new school superintendent, Margaret Campbell. As your article noted, the large grant the school received and innovations made at the school were greeted by a visit from Denise Juneau, the excellently qualified Montana superintendent of public instruction.

Particularly, I appreciated the remarks made by Campbell and her description of the innovations she has helped initiate at the school. Campbell is a four-year education graduate of Montana State University-Northern back in the days when it was called Northern Montana College.

Margaret Campbell was one of my advisees at Northern and also took several courses that I taught, particularly three or more courses from me in the fine art of writing a quality essay. Recently, she told me, "You're really the one who taught me to write."

From Northern, Margaret went on to the doctoral program in education and human services at the University of Montana in Missoula. While in the program to receive her doctoral degree, she wrote a highly regarded doctoral dissertation "The Leadership Qualities of Five Successful College Presidents."

While in the doctoral program, Margaret served for more than a decade as the president of Fort Belknap College on the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation south of Harlem.

The name of Fort Belknap College has now been changed to the traditional tribal name of Aaniiih Nakoda College.

After leaving Fort Belknap College, Margaret accepted a position as executive vice president at Fort Peck College in Poplar on the Sioux-Assiniboine reservation. While at Fort Peck College, Margaret was one of the few women elected to the Montana State Legislature. While serving in the Legislature, she was one of the only legislators ever to be graded with an A-plus for her voting record in education. A result of her service to education in the Montana Legislature, and at the two tribal colleges where she was employed, Margaret received the 2009 Educational Leadership and excellence Award from the Department of Educational Leadership at the University of Montana.

Recently, Margaret has assumed the leadership of the troubled school at Hays-Lodge Pole, whose students, as your article notes, had received the second-worst test scores in the state. In addition, the school board was badly divided and filled with dissension among members — and among parents and students.

Now that Margaret is in charge and an almost wholly new school board has been elected, the school has received the $1.5 million grant through the Montana Office of Public Instruction under the leadership of Juneau and is filled with a new sense of uplift and optimism for the future.

We can all celebrate the fact that Juneau was on hand to help Margaret and the school celebrate the grant and the new leadership, all of which promises a very bright, new, upward-bound future for Hays-Lodge Pole.

A special note of congratulations for Margaret Campbell who put the whole thing together.

(Bill Thackeray lives in Havre. He is a retired Montana State University-Northern professor.)