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Deegan takes over as head of Hill County schools

A retired Havre teacher with more than three decades of experience has taken over as Hill County superintendent of schools.

"I am looking forward to the challenge and learning something new, doing something new and serving the public," Hill County Superintendent of Schools Marie Deegan said. "That is one of the things my family is big on, is public service and I feel like I did public service in a way as a teacher."

County Superintendent Maureen Stott retired effective June 30.

Deegan started in the position Thursday.

"Based on the resume and the answers in our interview, we felt Marie was the best candidate," Hill County Commissioner Diane McLean said.

Deegan is from Stanford.

"I am a Stanford graduate, just high school," she said, laughing.

Following high school, she attended Carroll College in Helena where she earned a bachelor's degree in Spanish. Deegan started teaching right after graduating from Carroll at a small school in North Dakota, then spent three years teaching at Chinook High School and then headed to Casper, Wyoming.

Deegan said she had a great high school Spanish teacher, Peter Landthorn, and the fact she loved Spanish was why she wanted to become a teacher.

"He was very good and dynamic, and when you are in high school, those kinds of things really appeal to you," she said.

After her time in Casper, she went back to school to pursue a paralegal degree which she never used, but had finished out a year in Billings then went and taught at Malta High School. In addition, she attended law school at the University of Montana where she worked for and clerked for the Montana Supreme Court.

"I went to law school in the middle of it all because I thought, 'Oh I'm never going to have enough money if I just teach,' but then you find out there is more to life than just money," Deegan said.

After spending time in law, she went back to teaching and taught at Havre High School for 27 years, totaling up to 34 years in education.

"When you work with kids, every day is different and you laugh at least once a period, so that's always fun. I enjoyed teaching," she said.

She retired from Havre High last year, but the superintendent job opened up this summer, so she applied for it.

McLean provided a list of some of the duties of the county superintendent, as set forth in Montana Code Annotated:

• Compile budgets from all county schools including joint district information and present to the commissioners for approval of amounts to levy in the upcoming budget year;

• Receive all home school notification papers from Hill County home school parents and communicate with them for things such as spelling bee, driver's education, scholarship opportunities, statewide student contests, etc.;

• Receive and stamp all new educator licenses and renewals for all Hill County teachers;

• Give administrative support to country schools and districts that have no administration in the county;

• Attend individual education plan meetings for students in those small districts;

• Receive all transportation routes for all Hill County bus routes, compile costs and schedule an annual transportation meeting to approve all routes and costs as provided;

• Supervise and evaluate teachers and paraprofessionals in small country schools;

• Figure retirement payments and transportation payments for all county schools and ask treasurer to disburse money to the school districts;

• Act as hearing officer in certain cases;

• Conduct the county spelling bee with all county schools and home-schools;

• Help prepare calendars, staff handbooks and student handbooks for all country schools;

• Help with Achievement in Montana reporting, E-grant writing, reporting and administering, federal reporting for annual statistics and assume the role of authorized representative to the state for small country schools;

• Receive all bus inspections, driver certifications, and other transportation related documentation;

• Order report cards, period report forms, and teacher class record books, distribute, collect, and archive;

• Do teacher orientation and check-in in the fall, do teacher check-out in the spring;

• Attend board meetings as available to help support small schools.

She said her background in law could help her with her new duties.

"You can always have more education. Even though I'm not using my law degree as such, I guess I am every time I look at a statute to see if we are complying or what we need to do," she said.

She added that teaching taught her how to deal with people and meeting them on their terms, not just what her expectations are and to listen to what they need and to see if they can help each other out.

 

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