need honest montana info (Billings, Kalispell: crime, loan, school)

[bigtrees]

Originally Posted by KimnTx

Can anyone please tell me about the schools? If you moved to Montana from another state, was it hard for your child/children to adjust? Did they have an easy time making new friends? Any info would be great..thank you.

You said you wanted honest information, right?

In high school there was a family that moved from Texas to Montana. I was probably 15 or 16 at the time. The daughter was smoking hot, and very quickly she made friends. We all cared (at the age of 15) more about the looks of the new girls in school rather than where they were from. Did we care about the looks of the new boys? You'd have to ask the girls that question.

That's not to say that outsiders were well received in general in the schools. The other kids usually didn't go out of their way to make friends with most of them, so sometimes the new ones had friends and oftentimes they didn't. It really depends on what your kids are like. It's usually hard on most kids to change schools and it's hard to be the new person in school and not know very many people when everyone else knows pretty much everyone in the class and the class above and the class below. It is intimidating.

[KimnTx]

Thank you for your reply. I do worry about that. My boys ( 14-11-7 ) have a really hard time meeting strangers and they don't understand sometimes how unfriendly some can be. I guess that's any where you go.
Do you know anything about Stevensville?

[GaryGary]

Originally Posted by KimnTx

Can anyone please tell me about the schools? If you moved to Montana from another state, was it hard for your child/children to adjust? Did they have an easy time making new friends? Any info would be great..thank you.

I suppose they vary around the state.
We are in Bozeman, and the schools are very good.
My neighbor commutes to LA to be able to keep his kids in the Bozeman schools!

Gary

[KimnTx]

Thank you for your reply, Gary. Still looking into Stevensville. Doing alot of research on that one.

[jarsmom]

"Towns that dont change????"
Hmmmmm lets see, Kalispell has changed a lot, but it is still fantastic. It is nice to acess to more shopping without going to missoula or spokane. The downside is yes there is more traffic and people. Personally I dont care where people come from as long as I dont have to listen to them whine.
As far as the kids go would they do better is a somewhat larger area with more access to activities??? Just a thought. Just an FYI, most of western MT is going through a lot of growing pains, 21 percent growth rate in A lot areas. That is staggering, maybe as the econ. slows the influx will slow as well.
As for Stevensville or stevi It is wonderful, but again, being in the bitterroot it is experiencing changes too. Some good and some bad, depending or your point of view

[KimnTx]

Thank you. Is Bitterroot a very small town? We want very small. The kind of place where you have to drive 15 or 20 miles to go grocery shopping. Trying to get away from places like Houston and surrounding cities.

[jarsmom]

Bitterroot is not a town it is an area, " The Bitteroot valley, I dont know the exact population. Stevensville is in the bitterroot valley. I'm not sure
of the population of "stevi' as the locals call it. I dont know a lot about Stevi, but I am guessing it is going through growing pains as is most of western MT. Have you considered someplace like Darby, Libby or Eureka? tjere is lots of smaller communities in the West that havent been touched as much by the growth explosion.

[KimnTx]

Thank you very much for that info. I will look into those three places.
Are any of those in the valley also?

[bigtrees]

Darby, Libby, and Eureka are all out of the Flathead.

Are you needing work once you get here? That's usually a great place when you start looking is to find out what communities offer jobs that you are looking for.

[Rickers]

I'm not really sure what "out of the Flathead means " but Darby is in the Bitterroot Valley, and the Bitterroot river runs down (northward) to join the Clark Fork River just outside of Missoula.
Libby and Eureka are in a different county (Lincoln) and they are in a separate river drainage from the Flathead, Libby and Eureka are on the Kootenai river, it doesn't into the Flathead river or valley.