It's back to school at Mt. Hall

It’s back-to-school season at Mt. Hall. As most know, we were delayed in opening our doors due to construction, but now that we’re up and running it’s as if staff and students haven’t missed a beat.

We’ve officially got restrooms and a cafeteria among tons of other updates thanks to our incredible maintenance and custodial team in Boundary County School District and BF Builders.

Jeff Thompson is our building maintenance manager and Bob Overman and Mike Smith are the maintenance directors for the district — we appreciate the time and energy they have spent to get our building ready to go.

The teachers and paraprofessionals have also been incredibly flexible and have worked hard to get their classrooms ready for students. Most of all, we appreciate the understanding from families and the community in regards to our late start. We know that when you see the improvements you’ll be impressed.

Some of the improvements made to our building include: entirely new plumbing, a dedicated office space, sinks installed in classrooms, all bathrooms have been completely redone, new floors, new doors, and much more. The amount of work that was able to happen over the summer is truly remarkable.

These first couple of weeks, you will see classes learning and practicing routines and students building relationships with each other. Students and teachers are happy to be back together ready to take on the challenges of the new year. The enthusiasm that has been expressed this year by students is remarkable — I have already received a persuasive letter from a group of fifth graders that have great ideas for playground improvements. This wasn’t even prompted by their teacher.

We have a few new additions to our Wildcat family this year with several new staff members: Cara Urbaniak, Kristynne Cranford, Rachel Mertzweiller, Lori Carpenter, Megan Munson, and Jeff Thompson.

Cara Urbaniak teaches special education and is new to Mt. Hall, but not new to the district — she has been a special education teacher at Bonners Ferry High School, and was a paraprofessional at Naples prior to that.

Kristynne Cranford is teaching fifth grade and previously was a long-term substitute at Boundary County Middle School. Before that, she was a teacher in Washington.

Rachel Mertzweiller is teaching third grade which is what she taught in her previous district in Whitefish, Mont.

Lori Carpenter is teaching music and PE as well as Title 1. She has been in this role for years previously and is back after a couple of years off.

Megan Munson was in the food service department at Bonners Ferry High School and is now our kitchen manager at Mt. Hall.

Finally, Jeff Thompson is our head custodian and previously worked at Bonners Ferry High School. We are thrilled to have these amazing new staff members, as well as the existing staff, as part of the Wildcat family.