Arlee heads back to school with leadership changes, new building
EMILY MESSER | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 8 months, 1 week AGO
Anne Tanner stands in front of her “baby,” the new elementary building that she helped find the funding for. Tanner has been at Arlee Elementary since 2005 and will be taking over K-8 as elementary principal. (Emily Messer / Leader)
Emily Messer joined the Lake County Leader in July of 2025 after earning a B.A. degree in Journalism from the University of Montana. Emily grew up on a farm in the rolling hills of southeast Missouri and enjoys covering agriculture and conservation. She's lived in Montana since 2022 and honed her reporter craft with the UM J-School newspaper and internships with the RMEF Bugle Magazine and the Missoulian. At the Leader she covers the St. Ignatius Town Council, Polson City Commission and a variety of business, lifestyle and school news. Contact Emily Messer at [email protected] or 406.883.4343 | September 4, 2025 12:00 AM
At the Arlee School District, Anne Tanner is taking over the reins of grades K-8 and an Arlee veteran, Jake Bosley, is moving into a new role as high school principal.
Tanner, who has been at Arlee since 2005, has been the principal of K-6 grades for nine years and is now taking over as the K-8 leader in the new elementary school. Along with these changes, the district also has three new teachers.
“We have a new high school science teacher, new first grade teacher and then a high school music teacher,” Tanner said. But being able to hire new teachers had been a struggle due to state funding and Tanner said they have had to significantly cut their budget.
Overall, Tanner said enrollment at the school has remained steady with the high school at 111 and K-8 at 261 students.
Arlee is also planning to boost their reading curriculum with the $1.2 million Montana Science Reading grant they received. Tanner said this is a pretty competitive grant and they already had a head start to changing up their program when they received a Reading Cultural Council grant. The RCC grant allowed them to start Science of Reading training last year.
“So, all of our teachers, K-12 will be educated in the Science of Reading, which is basically back to phonics,” Tanner said. “It’s a big deal.”
Tanner said Montana students reading is not very proficient and the current curriculum “is obviously not working, so you have to do something different.”
The Montana Science Rading grant will add not only reading specialists, but it will change the way they teach reading.
The new $16 million elementary building is what Tanner calls her “baby” because it took creative methods to find funding. Before, the elementary building was split into two buildings Tanner said, which was a struggle and left her jumping back and forth between buildings.
The building is almost done with just minor touch-ups underway, such as trim, paint and landscaping. Tanner said the elementary students will start off their year in this building and will celebrate their new digs with a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Sept. 24.
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