School superintendents say open enrollment bill could up taxes

Mission Valley school superintendents are concerned about the local impacts of HB 203, a bill that was passed unanimously by the House Education Committee and has since passed the House on a second reading, 99-1.

According to the committee vice chair, Rep. Linda Reksten of Polson, the bill aims to broaden educational options for students by allowing them to change districts. She describes it as an “open enrollment bill” for “kids who want a course or apprenticeship that they can’t get in their own district.”

But superintendents say it duplicates agreements already in place, dictates how local school districts control out-of-district enrollment, and most importantly, would offload some of the responsibility for paying for education from the state to local taxpayers.

“School districts in the Mission Valley will be hit harder than most due to the mobility of students throughout the valley,” wrote Charlo superintendent Steve Love in a recent newsletter to parents.

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” he added.

Under the proposed legislation, the district of residence must pay tuition to the district of attendance. Due to the fluid movement of students across Lake County, that could mean “continual passing of checks back and forth between districts, funded by the permissive tuition levy,” said Ronan Superintendent Mark Johnston. “I would not think this idea would be supported by the local taxpayers if they knew how this was going to affect them.”

In a letter addressed to the House Education Committee, Johnston outlined a couple of common situations.

“We have many students who can start the year in Ronan, then, because of one of many reasons, may end up having to attend a neighboring district while still living in Ronan. Then, after a couple of months, things change and they come back to Ronan. For some of our students, this may happen multiple times,” he writes.

Under agreements in place, authorized by local school boards, “we do not ask for, or pay other districts for their out-of-district students. It seems to work well for us.”

HB 203, however, sets up a funding formula for out-of-district students that school officials say would have to be covered by each district’s permissive tuition levy. At the same time, it won’t allow districts to waive tuition fees, which is their current approach.

Johnston uses the example of a student who moves to Ronan in September, but the family decides to pursue out-of-district attendance to the St. Ignatius School District for the remainder of the 2023-24 school year. Although Ronan hasn’t received any state reimbursement for the student, under HB 203, they would still be expected to pay St. Ignatius over $2,000 for his or her tuition.

“We have not received any money for this student, yet we have to pay money from our taxpayers’ non-voted tuition levy to the other district,” says Johnston.

“Having to increase tuition mills for our taxpayers to pay for out-of-district students goes against everything we are trying to do for our taxpayers,” he adds.

St. Ignatius Superintendent Jason Sargent also voiced concerned about the bill’s funding mechanism. “The public needs to know legislators are using ‘local control’ to really mean ‘locally fund’ education and are shifting the state’s responsibility to fund education onto the already over-taxed local taxpayer.”

School funding is never easy to understand. But basically, it works like this: school districts receive payments from the state general fund at the start of each school year, based on previous year’s enrollment. ANB, or average number belonging, is calculated by averaging the enrollment numbers from Oct. 1 and Feb. 1 of the prior year and amounts to roughly $6,000 per student.

Currently, if a student who resides in St. Ignatius decides to attend school in Ronan, Ronan will be reimbursed the following year because the student adds to the district’s headcount.

“It works well for us,” says Sargent. “In this valley, we all have kids in other people’s districts so it’s all pretty even.”

Under the proposed law, St. Ignatius would owe Ronan 35% of its ANB (around $2,100) to cover tuition. The district would have to raise its permissive tax levy to pay Ronan that amount – even though the Ronan School District would be reimbursed the following year via the ANB formula.

The permissive tax levy is set by each school district in August and is used to cover additional expenses for special education students. In St. Ignatius, the levy is typically around $100,000 a year.

Under HB 203, Sargent estimates the board would have to increase the local levy from 3 to 10% to make sure they have enough money to cover the cost of tuition for kids who opt to go to school elsewhere.

Complicating the matter further is the fluidity between school districts. “We all try to have our out-of-district applications in by June,” says Sargent. “But situations pop up … and kids and families cannot have their lives planned out a year in advance.”

Most egregious to him is that it allows the state to shift more of the tax burden on to local taxpayers. “It really bothers me that the state will save money with this bill and local taxpayers would have to pick that up,” he said. “I don’t think property owners understand and I don’t think politicians leading this or voting for this understand what they’re doing to their local taxpayers.”

The bill does allow districts to set enrollment standards for out-of-district students, based on grades, behavior and attendance, and decrees that adding more students must not interfere with the district’s accreditation or enrollment caps.

According to Reksten, “it’s about focusing on the student as part of our emphasis to elevate student success.”

Even though local districts have these regulations in place, “there needs be a process for every district to set that up,” she said.

She pointed out that the state’s educational coalition, including representatives from the Montana School Board Association and the Montana Rural Education Association, spoke in support of the bill because it sets a statewide standard for handling out-of-district students.

“I understand the mobility issue,” she added. But under HB 203, “a student can’t decide tomorrow that they’ll leave through open enrollment … You can set parameters for this.”

“It’s basically not a free-for-all,” she said. “It’s an orderly process that school boards can orchestrate.”

According to Sargent, it’s already an orderly process. “We already have the discretion to say no or yes, but (setting firm deadlines) is totally unrealistic for where we live. Things pop up, things happen to families and they have to be able to get into other districts.”

Rexsten also believes the bill can help school districts “get in touch with what the interests are of students and maybe have to address course choices – and that’s a good thing.”

She says the measure is part of a package of bills aimed at giving students more educational options, and elevating students’ achievement and success. The committee is also considering legislation aimed at improving early intervention for students who are struggling academically, establishing parameters for charters schools, and using some of the budget surplus to create a health insurance trust fund.

“I would just encourage school leaders to relax a little bit and see what happens here,” she said. The round of education bills wending through the Legislature “is setting us up to be successful – that’s how I look at it.”

“I do believe that we’ll figure this out in a reasonable fashion – we’re only at the first step of the process,” she added. Along with the public-school charter bill, “it’s about providing student choice within the public system. This is just one aspect of it – you ‘ve got to look at the whole picture.”

“The current way we handle out-of-district students is working in our area and makes sense to the administrators and school boards,” counters Johnston. “There are many other pressing issues to improve how we educate students, but this bill is not what schools or taxpayers need.