Governor touts education legislation during Polson stop

Governor Greg Gianforte was in Polson last Friday, notching the sixth stop in his tour of Montana’s 56 counties. After visiting with ag producers at Betty’s Diner, he stopped at Linderman Gym to tout educational accomplishments, including two bills sponsored by local legislators Linda Reksten and Dan Salomon, who were on hand for the ceremonial bill signing.

He told the small audience, which included a trio of school officials, that the Legislature had funded K-12 public schools at record levels, adding $85 million to the base rate for the coming biennium. “Never before have our public schools been funded at this level,” he said, noting that the funding bill enjoyed broad bipartisan support.

He also supported ongoing efforts to increase salaries for starting teachers by $3,500 via the Teach Act, signed in 2021 and expanded this year.

“As the son of a public-school teacher and the father of an up-and-coming calculus teacher this is near and dear to my heart,” he said.

He then turned the podium over to Rep. Reksten, whose House Bill 321 increases infrastructure funding for public schools, and to Sen. Salomon, whose Senate Bill 373 makes it easier for those with college degrees to become teachers.

From her years as a school superintendent, Reksten said she understood that schools were perennially short on funding for infrastructure. She noted that a study in 2008 identified $360 million in needed upgrades and repairs to facilities across the state.

Her legislation makes around $22 million available to school districts for maintenance and capital improvement projects. The bill utilizes money from the state’s budget surplus to bulk up the school facilities fund – one of seven allocations within the coal severance tax fund.

“If you’re a low tax district you’ll get more of that chunk of funding and if you’re in a high-tax district you’ll still get funding,” she said. At the same time, taxpayers will see a reduction “in the number of mills on your bill.”

Salomon talked about SB 373, which makes it easier for aspiring teachers who already have a college degree to earn certification without leaving their communities and builds on efforts by the Board of Education to streamline licensure requirements for teachers.

Under his legislation, people with college degrees can earn a teaching degree from where ever they live by completing online proficiency-based classes that “make these folks ready to be in the classroom.”

In researching the legislation, he found a company that has provided teacher training to 15,000 people. Of those, 97% were still in the classroom after three years.

“You don’t see that kind of retention rate anywhere, let alone in rural communities,” he said. “Those folks want to be in that community, they want to teach these kids and maybe their own kids. It was really a pleasure to take that bill, run it through and get it done.”

“I’m proud of what we got done for education this time,” added the second-term senator. He called the 2023 session “probably the biggest and best as far as getting things across the finish line that we’ve ever had.”

A substitute teacher for the Polson School District, who described himself as “an old cowboy,” told the governor that, after teaching second graders, he had decided to return to school and earn his teaching credentials.

“My concern, if I invest my time and money, is finding a job afterwards. I’ve become emotionally invested in this community,” he said. “I’ve had jobs I enjoy before, but I’ve never had so much fun.”

Asked about the pair of charter school bills he recently signed into law, the governor noted Montana was among the last states to approve charter-school legislation.

“Each has its own place,” he said of the two distinctly different laws. “I’m a firm believer that parents know what’s best for kids and should be able to choose charter legislation that provides more options for parents to do what’s right for their kids.”

While both bills grant parents and local groups the ability to establish charter schools, one confines that pursuit to the purview of local school boards and insists that charter schools comply with the licensing and curriculum guidelines that govern traditional public schools. The second allows for “community choice schools,” governed by a new seven-member commission and exempted from most existing public-school regulations with oversight from boards elected by staff and parents.

“Charter schools are public schools, full stop,” said the governor. But he believes the two models passed by the Legislature “give more latitude for local school boards to potentially implement in a more innovative way … that has less of the bureaucratic state oversight that comes with the current system.”

The governor also mentioned that the concerns about school safety that helped get a recent bond measure across the finish line in Polson were shared by parents across Montana.

“We all want, as parents, to know our kids are safe when we send them off on the bus or drop them off at school,” he said.

A bill signed into law in 2021 expanded the use of school security officers and Reksten’s bill to increase infrastructure spending are both “tools in the box so local school boards can decide what’s right for the community.”

“I’m a big believer in local control,” he said. “Risk assessment has to be done at the local level but it’s important that the state provide the resources to make sure some of these things are possible.”