Two vying for lone Hays-Lodge Pole school board slot

Hays locals Ken Morin and Josie Cliff are running for the lone open school board member position on the Hays-Lodge Pole school board.

Election day is Tuesday, and Cliff and Morin both said they hope they will be given a chance to impact curriculum as a board member

Cliff grew up in Lodge Pole and has 8- and 10-year-olds in the school district. She said she had plenty of time to get to know people in the area, many of whom, she said, have asked her to run for the position.

“I know pretty much everyone out here,” she said.

Cliff graduated Hays-Lodge Pole High school and then Aaniiih Nakoda College, where she earned an associate degree in business administration, before spending 10 years in Billings as a realty specialist at Indian Health Service in Billings.

She works at the Fort Belknap Community Economic Development Corp. but said she will transition to the soon-to-be-open grocery co-op Red Paint Trading Post once the store is open. The grocery co-op has a grand opening scheduled for the end of July, she said.

For Cliff, she said, teacher recruitment would be an important part of her agenda as a board member. The area is remote and isolated, and there needs to be better effort in recruiting good teachers. Counselors are also part of the concern, she said. As far she knows, she said, no counselors are at the elementary school, and she is not sure about the other grades.

When her children were attending school in Billings, counselors were more readily available, she said, and her children utilized them. She would like that for the Hays-Lodge Pole district.

Another concern for Cliff is implementing current technology as a teaching tool. She said there are different math and reading programs using tablets and other technology, and she’d like to see that in Hays-Lodge Pole district.

If Ken Morin were to win, this wouldn’t be the first time the Hays man would be a school board member. He’s been there twice before, in 1991 and 2006.

Morin, a former tribal police and game warden of 15 years, is unemployed at the time.

He was born and grew up in Hays, spent time in Havre in the early 1970s and was an education major at Montana State University-Northern, but didn’t graduate.

Morin’s vocational journey also includes being a resource officer for Hays-Lodge Pole K-12, a job that included getting personal with the kids.

“I went to houses and pretty much dragged kids to school,” he said.

Morin said he was a paraprofessional in Hays school from 2010 to 2016.

His experience, he said, gives him an expansive overview.

“I can see fully what needs to be done,” he said.

For him, Morin said, academics and disciplinary uniformity would be on top of his agenda as a school board member.

Morin said the district is losing good students to neighboring Harlem, and he believes a large part of that is that the academics are not up to par.

“We need to effectively bridge the curriculum to the state standard,” he said. “We need conformity.”

Morin said he hopes the incoming superintendent will help address the disciplinary problem the district has. Consistency would be key when it comes to discipline, he said.

“Little Johnny doesn’t get the punishment Little Billy gets. It’s got to be consistent,” he said. “I’m not above expulsion.”

Morin added there also needs to be more positive reinforcement toward students. He believes students are being demeaned and that needs to be addressed.