School board approves Goodman's contract

After nearly 11 months at the helm, Libby Superintendent Ron Goodman is set to continue his service for another two years.

School board members voted unanimously to reinstate Goodman during a Jan. 11 meeting. The board must still evaluate him, however, before the members can finalize the details of his contract.

While the evaluation is standard procedure, members elected to delay the process until the spring as board’s docket remains packed with coronavirus-related concerns.

The school board hired Goodman in March of last year to replace outgoing Superintendent Craig Barringer. Having worked as an educator since the mid-1990s, Goodman previously served as principal of Libby Elementary School. While he briefly pursued a career as a financial advisor in 2018, he told board members at the time of his hire that education remained his passion.

Over the past academic year, Goodman guided the district through challenges posed by the pandemic. Throughout the summer, he worked with the board to refine Libby’s reopening guidelines. Goodman’s approach centered on keeping classrooms open while using measures such as mask requirements to protect the health of students and district staff.

Twice during the fall, Goodman suspended in-person learning at the Libby Elementary School and Libby Middle High School after health officials raised concerns that the virus was spreading within the buildings.

Despite the closures, Libby schools have seen relatively few cases of virus transmission on its campuses. Goodman announced at the Jan. 11 meeting that since the district reopened in the fall, it has seen 45 positive cases. Health officials believe only eight of these originated within schools.

Managing the number of students and staff in quarantine has been a persistent problem for the district. Health officials have requested 450 quarantines within Libby Schools this academic year, according to the figures Goodman presented at the meeting.

High numbers of students and staff in quarantine have required school administrators to put entire classes on remote learning schedules. Goodman said he decided to suspend in-person learning at the Libby Elementary and Libby Middle High schools in part because he realized the district might lack the staff to keep the schools open. He suspected that too many employees would be in quarantine after the health department completed contact tracing.

Even so, Goodman has remained committed to the mission of providing students with safe in-person education. During the Jan. 11, school board meeting, Goodman said he would like to maintain the district’s mask policy until the threat of the virus subsided. That announcement came after Gov. Greg Gianforte said he planned to lift the statewide mask mandate within a matter of weeks.

“We don’t want to be in masks any longer than anybody else does,” said Goodman. “But we also want to have kids in schools as long as we can.”