Ronan’s new superintendent, Sandra Beal, bounds to her office door like an athlete – or an Alaska fisherman. She’s been both, and brings that same seemingly boundless energy to her new job of helming School District 30.

She’s also an optimist, who believes “by working together and listening to one another and keeping students at the center of every decision, I believe our best days are still ahead.”

Beal stepped into her post July 1, when her predecessor Mark Johnston officially retired after a decade as Ronan’s superintendent. But she didn’t have to step far. Her former office as curriculum director was just down the hall from her new digs in the district office.

In a recent interview, Beal said she's inherited a strong, stable school district that's benefitted from investments in "high quality curriculum and instructional strategies, technology and student opportunities."

"Now it's about supporting our staff and refining those efforts and making sure every student benefits," she said. 

Beal is a seasoned educator and administrator, who earned her teaching credentials at MSU Billings, attending college on a volleyball scholarship.

Her roots were in Juneau, Alaska, where she grew up, and in Troy, where her family moved when she was 15. In high school, she still spent summers on her family’s commercial fishing boat.

“That was the way we survived,” she said. “I would take off the last couple of weeks of May and I wouldn't show back up until just in time for school.”

Her years spent as a deckhand taught her the value of hard work in a vocation where “you need to do what you need to do to get the job done.”

Her mom was an educator, who taught math at the college level and helped instill a love of learning in her daughter. Beal was also “really into athletics,” especially volleyball and basketball.

“I like not only learning, but also working with kids,” she said, which led her to earn a teaching degree in health enhancement with a minor in history.

She returned to Troy for her student teaching and was offered a job teaching social studies in the middle school, before adding high school social studies and PE to her duties.

“I realized that I wanted some more doors to open,” Beal recalls, so while still teaching full-time in Troy, she became an adjunct professor at Flathead Valley Community College in Kalispell and earned her master’s in school administration from the University of Scranton in Pennsylvania.

That degree helped her move into the associate principal position at Troy high school and middle school, which she held for two years while also teaching part time.

Supporting Native kids “part of our identity”

When a full-time position opened for vice principal at Ronan Middle School in 2015, she applied and worked under then-principal Johnston for a year before he was hired as superintendent in 2016. This marked the first time Beal stepped into Johnston’s shoes, spending five years as RMS principal.

“I absolutely loved it,” she said. “I love the energy of the middle school. The kids, they wear so much of their life on their sleeves.”

When Ronan’s former curriculum director, Joan Graham, retired, Johnston encouraged Beal to apply for the job.

While she was reluctant to leave the middle school, she also saw the district-wide job as an opportunity to broaden her administrative experience with a position that “touches all systems, across everything, across every part of the district.”

“This would give me a way to step one foot into the district and also kind of keep my one foot in the buildings,” she said.

She started her new job just as the COVID pandemic erupted in 2020 and found a whole new stack of challenges awaiting her.

In addition to overseeing the school district’s curriculum, she worked with at-risk students, and served as liaison for kids who were homeless, in foster care, or participating in the early literacy program.

She also served as coordinator of Title IX, the federal program that assures equal access and participation in sports and academics for boys and girls, and Title I, which provides federal money to school districts with a high percentage of low-income students to help close learning gaps in reading, writing and math.

After working with staff and students across the district for six years, she decided to apply for the superintendent post last fall. “I thought, ‘this is a great way for me to continue that momentum.’”

The school board had decided to hire the new superintendent from within the district, if possible, and had two qualified candidates for the job, Beal and Ronan Middle School principal Frank Jobe.

When the board unanimously selected Beal last November, outgoing superintendent Johnston praised her grant-writing prowess and told the Leader her organizational skills “are second to none.”

He also pointed out — in response to a community member who had encouraged the board to broaden its search and seek a qualified Native applicant — that Beal had cultivated a strong working relationship with tribal educators, and wrote at the time, “the Ronan School District could not have picked a more qualified applicant.”

According to Beal, supporting Native American students happens across the district “day in and day out … It’s who we are, it’s part of our identity.”

Charter Academy offers “outside-the-box” learning

Looking ahead, Beal sees multiple challenges and opportunities on the horizon. A major thrust for the district has been the Ronan Charter Academy (RCA), an online program that serves high school and middle school students, and — for the first time this year – elementary students too.

The district’s expansion of online learning opportunities was a response to new state funding for school choice and independent and vocational learning, as well as the COVID shutdown, when some of the kids who were confined to home-based learning during the pandemic never returned to the classroom.

“We're trying to look at new innovative ways to break down the brick and mortar and to think outside the box because not everybody fits inside that box,” Beal said. “That's the beauty of the charter program – it's not a one-size-fits-all.”

With the RCA, the district can offer more learning options, from online to in-class to hybrid, as well as a variety of non-traditional coursework that includes automotives and health care or the opportunity to earn credits at Salish Kootenai College while pursuing a high school diploma.

In the process, the district has discovered that students still appreciate in-person learning. “They don't want to be isolated in a room at home,” Beal said. “We're finding that kids like the opportunity to create their own unique pathway, but they also want to be connected to someone or something.”

In other arenas, the district is completing work on enhancing school security, financed by a $650,000 Stop School Violence grant from the Department of Justice. That’s helped Ronan install new intercom systems in each building and add more secure entryways and security fencing.

As to athletics, Beal said the floor of the Ronan Event Center, located at the middle school, is getting refinished and painted in a new design that showcases the Mission Mountains and McDonald Peak. Down the road, Beal noted that the football field is in line for new turf.

Paying attention to state, federal changes

Looking ahead, Beal said she’ll be paying close attention to what happens with the 2027 legislative session in Helena. Her biggest concern, with school enrollment numbers dropping across the state, would be an effort to further privatize public education by diverting funds to what she describes as “micro schools.”

“The interesting thing there is that there's not a lot of accountability for the curriculum or the educational structure,” Beal said. “So that’s definitely something we’ll be looking at.”

Another significant change involves the changing role of federal government in education.

The Trump administration is currently in the process of dismantling the Department of Education and moving K-12 services to other federal agencies, such as the Departments of Labor, Justice or Health and Human Services.

The district receives more than $1.6 million annually from Title I funding in the form of the ESSA Consolidated Grant, plus funds for special education, gifted and talented education, and Carl Perkins funding for career and technical education.

Because of the district’s location at the heart of the Flathead Indian Reservation, it also receives federal Impact Aid, designed to reimburse local school districts for lost local property tax revenue and extra operational costs caused by tax-exempt federal property, including tribal lands.

“We'll see what they actually cut and approve,” said Beal of changes at the federal level. Meanwhile, she advised, “Buckle up.”

Building on district's momentum

Overall, Beal said students, parents and staff can expect a steady hand on the tiller from the former deckhand.

“Ronan has an incredibly strong foundation built by dedicated educators and staff, families and community members. I've seen it, I've been a part of it,” she said. “My role is to build on that momentum, not to reinvent it.”

In her spare time, Beal has a healthy appetite for outdoor fun, which includes fishing, camping, hiking and hunting. “Maybe that's part of Alaska in me.”

“I'm putting a lot of time into being in a room with four walls,” she said. “So when I'm not in my office, I like to go play in the great outdoors.”