Hello!

Glad you stopped by our Montana web page to learn about what we Montanans like to call the "last best place." We call Montana that because we believe Montana is a very special place... a place of wide open spaces and friendly people.

I'm the Superintendent of Montana's schools. That is like being a principal... but instead of being the principal of one school, I am the principal of over 900 schools in Montana! Our schools come in all shapes and sizes. We have city schools with hundreds of students and one room schools with just one or two kids! In fact 132 of our schools have five or fewer students.

You might wonder why we have so many different sizes of schools. The main reason is that Montana is a very big state. It's so big that if you could put one corner of the state on the city of Chicago, the rest of the state would stretch all the way to the Chesapeake Bay on the Atlantic Ocean. In this very large state, we only have 165,000 school children. This means students are spread across thousands of square miles from our western mountain valleys to our rolling eastern plains.

Just getting to school can be very interesting for kids. Our winter storms can cause temperatures to drop more than 20 degrees below zero and of course drop lots of snow. After a big snowstorm some of our students travel to school on skis and snowmobiles.

Montana is a great place to see and enjoy wildlife. The animals are everywhere. At my house in Helena I often find deer and rabbits in my yard munching on my flowers. They come right into town and don't seem at all afraid of people or my golden retriever Cagney.

Like many places, Montana has people of different cultures, traditions and languages. Montana is home to nine Indian tribes on seven different reservations. There you can find children who speak not only English but also Crow, Cheyenne, Chippewa Cree, Sioux, Assiniboine, Gros Ventres, Kootenai, Salish and Blackfeet. I've had the honor of being adopted by the Blackfeet Tribe. My Indian name is Apasipahtaki, which means "Wise Owl Woman".

I hope you'll use this web page to learn more about our state and our people. But the best way to learn about Montana is to come and see it for yourself. If you do, I know you'll have a wonderful time.

Make sure you stop by to see me. I enjoy meeting new friends from all over our country and our world.

Nancy Keenan

Thanks for visiting the Montana Kids Site! We hope you've found the information both educational and entertaining. If you have comments or suggestions on ways we can improve the site please send us email at kids@travel.state.mt.us.

You can also help your family plan a trip to Montana. Have your folks request a statewide travel packet by sending their mailing address to travelinfo@travel.state.mt.us.