by John Dowd
The Victor School District is ready for 2025, and excited to roll out a number of changes for the year. Scott Stiegler is Victor Schools Superintendent, and this is his second year in the position. He wanted to highlight some new programs the school is excited about for 2025, and some programs they want to tell the community that they are continuing and even expanding.
The first of these is the STEM program, which they are bringing back. This program was active several years ago and is for middle and high school. However, their primary focus will be on improving the middle school portion. They can offer this because they now have a full time teacher able to take this program on.
Another highlight mentioned by Stiegler is that they will be the recipients of the Montana READS literacy grant, a rebranded version of a similar grant that just ran its course. Victor was a recipient during that last grant cycle. According to Stiegler, having been able to receive this again is a huge deal. This is technically a five-year grant, which helps a school allocate resources to improving literacy for grades K-12. Over the course of the previous grant cycle they were able to get their K-5 from the bottom 15 to the top 15 in the state. These numbers are based on literacy proficiency across schools in the state of Montana.
Scott Stiegler, Victor Schools Superintendent. Star file photo.
Steigler spoke on this success, saying, “It takes a lot of leg work, it takes staff buy-in, it takes team work.” He added that they hope to turn their focus to bring the middle school program up as well. “We didn’t just do it once, we want this to be the way we do things, always,” said Stiegler. They will continue their efforts with K-5 as well.
Another big program, and one Stiegler feels turned out to be a bigger opportunity for the community than he realized early on, is the district’s new Victor Online Academy option. This program is built for students and families that want to approach school in a non-traditional manner, which may work better for them. The program utilizes Harmony Educational Services, an online platform which has been popular with homeschool families for a while. This program is a great fit for some families and allows them three separate tracks.
The first is like a more traditional homeschool program, where students primarily work from home. However, these first track students work through courses attached to the Victor Online Academy system, rather than signing up directly through Harmony.
The second pathway is a hybrid, which allows students to attend in-person classes or electives and to do other courses at home, at their own pace.
The final track is geared towards athletes, and gives them the option to get their required attendance, while also taking on a more flexible course-load, with some online and some in-school.
According to Stiegler, the standout feature of this new program will be that it comes at no cost to participating students. Families that sign up for Victor Online Academy get to utilize Harmony’s online educational services, without having to pay the tuition. This leads to a huge “cost savings,” for families, said Stiegler. The new program already has around 20 students signed up, 13 of which are new to the district. Victor has a dedicated teacher managing the program, who even has lab hours so students can physically come into school to utilize school equipment and get more direct in-person instruction.
Stiegler also wanted to mention that they are beginning a co-op sports program for their students this year, allowing those interested in soccer, wrestling, softball and baseball to work with Corvallis.
Stiegler is proud of their successes, and spoke of his team’s unique leadership method. He referred to this as a “servant leadership approach,” by which he described flipping the traditional leadership pyramid on its head, with the top supporting all other aspects of the operation. For him, this means his job is about working to “support the needs of staff and students.”
“If we’re doing it with kiddos in mind,” said Stiegler, “we’re doing it for the right reasons.”