Education funding has become juggling match
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The end is starting to come into sight here in Helena as the budget will be back from conference committee and ready to pass on to the governor this week. He will not like it as it is. It will be balanced to the revenue projections and they are still going down each month. The positioning with vetoes, amendatory veto and all the conference committees means that things can change every hour.
A couple of education bills are being heard this week. One I will be carrying on the house floor is SB 315. There has been a tremendous amount of hype about this bill. Most of it is wrong. It is being labeled a bill to crush tenure. It does not affect the tenure review process until the hearing process. It takes around a year for the review, mentoring, tutoring, and the program of improvement to get done. There are many timelines for the evaluations that must be followed. If at that point there is sufficient concern the administrator makes a recommendation to the superintendent of the district. If the superintendent concurs, a termination hearing is scheduled. Under current law the hearing is held and all evidence can be presented and each side has representation. This hearing is in front of the local board of trustees. They are the elected members of the community charged with making the decisions for the school district. After the decision is rendered, it can be appealed. Right now it would go to an arbitrator who would throw out the decision of the trustees and start over. SB 315 requires an arbitrator to give deference to the decision of the local school board. This decision is then subject to the same appellate review as other administrative decisions. This could involve county superintendent of schools, OPI and the courts. This bill just gives the local trustees of the school district a voice in the decision.
The other education bill is for funding. School funding started off with the governor’s budget. His bill, HB 136 wanted to take all the reserves from any oil and gas money that counties and school districts in eastern Montana had. Then would have had to back fill with new tax money for these districts. Probably would have been as big of a tax increase as Eastern Montana would have ever seen. It got tabled. Next the Senate tried to come up with a plan. SB 403 would have raised around $44 million over the next two years. It would take some of the oil and gas money and also tied some funding to accountability of the school with test scores. The Democrats in the Senate teamed with a few oil and gas Republicans to kill this bill. Now the House is trying to utilize a bill by Senator Zinke that is about co-op buying for school districts. A funding component has been amended into this. It is allowing a small increase in the inflation factor to money schools receive. The real issue is that in the last funding cycle more than $60 million dollars in federal stimulus money was infused into K-12 funding. Now just to get spending for schools to the same level, it will take more than $60 million in state fund dollars. Any increases will be above this and come from the ending fund balance. This is turning into quite a juggling match.
Thank you all for your notes. I can be reached at dansalomon12@gmail.com and (406) 253-9724.
