Hi, my name is Brian Page. I’ve lived in Montana for over 25 years and put two wonderful kids through the Bozeman Public School system. I am very grateful for both of them and very proud of the fact that they are both working to support their communities during this difficult time; one making delicious food for our fellow Bozemanites, and the other fighting on the front lines of the pandemic in New York City as a nurse in a midtown emergency room.

That same sense of community and responsibility is what inspired me to try to give something back to BSD7. I’ve been a computer guy my entire life and an internet professional for almost 20 years, usually as a sideline to other work with a more direct, personal connection to the community: wrangling computer output for a copy shop; managing a trailer park; and now, partly as an antidote to Empty Nest Syndrome, a school bus driver (12 and 7).

Driving Bozeman’s kids has been an honor and a privilege, and one of the most rewarding experiences of my life; from the satisfaction of being able to personally ensure they get to school and back safely in the middle of the worst weather Montana has to offer, to the rich emotional rewards of being there for them when they share with me their joyful accomplishments, their secret fears, their outrage at life’s unfairness, and above all their endless, entertaining, endearing, and occasionally frustrating questions about life, the universe, and everything. School bus drivers play a subtly important role in the lives of the students they transport. The ride is the first challenge to deal with in the morning, and the last hurdle at the end of the day. It can be chaotic and stressful, and it can be a relaxing buffer zone between the very different worlds of home and school. There are days when it feels like Lord of the Flies as well as heartwarming days when little acts of spontaneous compassion or displays of considered wisdom and fairness beyond their years fills me with hope for the future. It is my honor to witness those latter, and my privilege gently to guide and encourage them into having more and more of them.

My parents both started their professional lives as teachers. My father then became an entrepreneur, creating many jobs over his lifetime, and my mother retired after a long career working for local government in the mental health field. Both of them always felt very strongly about the value of both education and community engagement, and so have I. I was very fortunate to attend schools with similar values. I graduated from Brown University in Providence RI with a BA in East Asian Studies (Japan Track) (‘89) enriched with a generous helping of STEM classes on the side. In the 80s, the virus that jumped from its wild hosts to cause havoc in human populations was HIV. 3 of my friends and I realized that people needed help making sense of this new threat so we founded Students for AIDS Awareness and rode our bicycles across the country, communicating basic information about HIV and AIDS at press conferences along the way. Among the many things I learned on that trip was that I was in love with the Montana Rockies. I still am.

As the COVID crisis looms larger and larger I have come to view it as a personal call to action. My knowledge and skills in academia and internet technology are needed by the community I love. I would greatly appreciate the opportunity to use them to help Bozeman schools not only survive this crisis, but to emerge from the other side vibrant and thriving. I believe the energy and focus Bozeman is summoning in response to this crisis provides us with an opportunity to build our already outstanding school system into a shining example for the country and the world of how we can institutionalize innovation and resiliency to consistently provide the highest quality education to every child in the community, even in the most challenging conditions. I sincerely hope you will consider giving me the opportunity to help make that happen by voting for me for Bozeman School District Elementary School Trustee on May 5th.

Thank you,

Brian Page

I have enormous respect for the Bozeman School District. Both my kids had excellent experiences there, from Longfellow through BHS. This is a very challenging time for the world, and Bozeman is no exception, but I know that we can rise to the challenge and end up stronger for the experience. I also believe that the knowledge, experience, expertise, and commitment that I would bring to the position of Elementary School Trustee on the Bozeman School Board would greatly benefit our District and our community.

Responding to the COVID-19 crisis has been a learning experience for us, and I would like the opportunity to help make sure we make the most of it. My professional career in internet application development coupled with my lifelong interest in science, my long history with innovative educational institutions and my close relationship with BSD both as a parent and as a bus driver gives me a palette of knowledge and experience which I believe is, if you’ll pardon the expression, just what the doctor ordered for Bozeman right now.

I am concerned, however, that the relationship between the District and the transportation provider, First Student, has become unnecessarily adversarial. I understand the financial, business and contractual reasons for the tension between them to exist, the District needs our kids to get to school on time and First Student has an industry-wide driver shortage to contend with. This relationship is particularly important, and fragile, considering that the opening of the new high school will add almost a dozen new bus routes at a time when the company is already getting fined by the district for being unable to satisfactorily cover existing routes. This calls, in my opinion, for cooperation and flexibility, but instead, I see conflict. Some of the fines levied against First Student last winter were solely a result of drivers wisely slowing down in extremely difficult winter driving conditions. The District’s latest public statement about drivers getting paid during the COVID-19 shutdown was that they were paying all their bills. Since what they meant was that they paid for days before the cancellation, and will not be paying for any cancelled routes, I believe they should have said so directly. Incidents like those erode this important relationship at a time when it is most vulnerable. I have no doubt that having a bus driver on the board would go a very long way towards repairing and strengthening that relationship to the benefit of the District, the drivers, and most of all, the students who depend on us.

I want to help Bozeman overcome these obstacles and leverage the distance learning investments we have already made into a set of enduring protocols which will not only make our District more resilient to the next crisis, but also more broadly and flexibly responsive to other needs already extant in our student body. Bozeman is generally doing a great job in this regard, but I believe we have the will and the ability to build a truly modern education infrastructure that can become a model of excellence for the whole nation. I would love a chance to help make that happen.