10 hope to fill 2 Rocky Boy school board slots

School election day is Tuesday, and 10 local candidates hope Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation voters will choose them to fill the two available slots for school board members.

The terms will be for three years.

Teddy Russette III has served on the Rocky Boy school board for six years already. He said the district has been making progress and his major goal is to push education and to help the school board through the tribal council, of which he is part of.

Russette was born and raised on Rocky Boy. He graduated Box Elder school and then received a certificate degree in construction and technology from Stone Child College on Rocky Boy. He has a daughter and son who both attend Rocky Boy schools and he said he’d like to see more students graduating and going to college.

Paulette Standing Rock was also born and raised on Rocky Boy. She graduated from Rocky Boy High School and earned an associate degree in human services from Stone Child College, where she now works with the Administration for Native Americans, a grant program. Her job is funded by the program and its aim is to encourage people on the reservation to speak Cree. She said she is a Cree language specialist.

Standing Rock, who has already served one year on the school board, said she has been encouraged by concerned parents to run for the position. With two children already having graduated Rocky Boy schools and three in the school right now, she said she likes to set policies that impact the children.

Her agenda would focus on inserting more culture and Cree language in the school system.

“For me, it’s always about culture,” she said, adding that she would like start smudging the buildings, starting with prayer and lighting incense to help students.

It would be nice to have more singing and drumming classes at the Indian Club, she said.

Unlike Russette III and Paulette Standing Rock, Harriette Standing Rock said she has never been a school board member. She has 43 years of experience in social services and now works at Voc Rehab on Rocky Boy.

Harriette Standing Rock, who was born in Havre and grew up on Rocky Boy, said she was one of the first female fire fighters on the reservation. She earned an associate degree in human services from Stone Child College.

Standing Rock said interest in the school board position stems from the challenges she had as a student.

“I’m interested because of the hardships I’ve had in school, and I want to find ways to make learning for our children fun. I want to encourage a campaign to teach Cree,” she said. “We need someone in there who knows politics.”

Martin Parker is a personal trainer at the Chippewa Cree Wellness Center. He, too, has been on the school board before, from 2008 to 2014. He has been working at the Wellness Center since 2011, where he helps people get in shape and puts on boot camps.

Parker was born and raised on Rocky Boy and earned a bachelor’s degree in education from Montana State University-Northern.

Like other candidates, Parker said he’d like to see changes, some of them along the way of culture.

“I’d like to see some change in the school system. Would like to see school revitalize the Cree language,” he said.

Bullying is another concern for Parker, something he said he’d like to see come to a halt in Rocky Boy schools. Increased teacher and staff presence would be one idea for curbing bullying, he said.

Other concerns, Parker said, are things like better active-shooter preparedness. He said there has never been an active shooter at the school, but it doesn’t hurt to be prepared.

Speeders in front of the school is also a concern, he said.

“There’s a lot of speeders when I drop off my grandkids,” he said.

Joseph Lafromboise was born in Havre, spend his teenage years in places like Gilroy and San Jose, California, before moving to Rocky Boy with his sons in 1984.

For the last three and a half years, Lafromboise has been working for the Tribal Water Resource department as the general assistant program coordinator. Lafromboise has already served on the board twice before and, he said, this time he would like to do so because he is concerned with the talk of cuts he’s been hearing.

“It’s a real threat,” he said of Native schools losing funding.

Lafromboise said he is confident that if the issues are given the proper attention, voters will react.

“We have a populace that, when there’s issues that pertain to them, they’ll go out and vote,” he said.

The reason funding can’t be curbed, he said, is because the graduation rate needs to be elevated to, ultimately, help students grow up and get higher-paying jobs.

Donita Hay will be running for the school board position for the first time. She has been an assistant tribal prosecutor for two years in June, and before that, she was a Chippewa Cree law enforcement corrections officer and dispatcher. She graduated Rocky Boy High School in 2001 and, although she has attended college since, she has focused on raising her children.

Her mother, she said, is a large reason why she is on Rocky Boy. She relocated to Rocky Boy in 1996 to be near family in general, and in 2013, her mother was diagnosed with cancer, which further prompted her to stay.

She has three children, one of whom is autistic, and the children attend Box Elder school. Hay said the reason for that is the same reason she is running for the position — bullying.

“I would like to address the bullying situations between elementary and high school,” she said. “It was the reason I removed my children from Rocky Boy.”

Hay said she also tried Havre schools, but that district, too, failed to pass the muster.

The bullying, which, she said, is something teachers and students alike do, is not being reported. Hay said she believes bullying is such an issue that it is significantly affecting attendance, and consequently, everything else that goes with that.

The other candidates are Michelle Sangrey, Van Four Souls Sr., John S. Colliflower and Billie Jo Coffee. They had not responded with requests for interviews by deadline this morning.