Montana K-12 funding may soon see changes

Education advocates joke that only a handful of people completely understand Montana’s state funding formula for K-12 education. The complexity of the formula has baffled the public, befuddled legislators and bedeviled educators since it was changed in the early 1990s.

By Allison Farrell of The Standard State Bureau

Change may again be in order.

A new commission of statewide education leaders, advocates and lawmakers has been assembled to study the state’s education system and will eventually suggest changes in education policy before the next Legislature convenes in 2005. This committee comes on the heels of a similar panel appointed by Gov. Judy Martz that met during the last legislative interim.

While the commission can discuss any school issues, education leaders predict that the state’s school funding formula will dominate discussions. The commission will convene by August.

‘‘I think our schools are going to beg us to look at school funding,” said Linda McCulloch, state superintendent of public instruction. ‘‘It’s too huge for the Legislature to tackle in four months with 1,500 other bills.”

Currently, the state guarantees every public school district $20,000 for its elementary program and $200,000 for its high school program. Districts are then given $3,906 for each elementary student and $5,205 for each high school student.

That formula worked when student enrollments were increasing and districts had only one elementary building and one high school building to maintain. But the formula has backfired, officials claim.

McCulloch explained that the Bonner School District receives $20,000 for its lone elementary school while the Billings Public School District — with its 21 elementary schools — also receives a total of $20,000 for its elementary program.

Declining student enrollment is also eroding education, officials say. When three students leave a district, that district loses thousands of dollars in state funding. The district can’t make up those dollars by letting a teacher go, cutting programs, turning out the lights or returning books.

‘‘It’s a very complex web,” said Senate President Bob Keenan, R-Bigfork, who is on the study commission.

Keenan said the commission will ‘‘scrutinize” the state’s education system and will look at everything, from funding to teacher pay to the Board of Public Education and the standards it sets for schools.

The commission will also likely focus on health insurance costs. Democrats and Republicans on the commission both said that a statewide health insurance pool for all public education employees will save a lot of taxpayer money.

The Great Falls Public Schools pay $366 a month for an employee’s family health insurance plan while the public school system in Dillon pays $800 a month, said Sen. Don Ryan, D-Great Falls, who is on the committee.

A statewide health insurance pool would defray the increasing cost of health insurance in the state’s smaller schools, he said. The measure failed to pass the Legislature this past session after the state’s largest school districts opposed it.

Some think the funding system needs to shift away from a per-pupil basis while others say a guaranteed inflationary increase in state funding would help solve education’s funding crisis. K-12 education is one of the only state entities not given inflationary funding increases from year to year.

Rep. Holly Raser, D-Missoula, who is an elementary teacher in Target Range schools, said she’s glad the state is finally tackling the long-time problem of school funding. She is also on the committee.

‘‘If we don’t fix it now, then we’re cutting our own throats,” she said. ‘‘This is something that isn’t going away.”

The core of the committee will be staffed by McCulloch, Keenan, Ryan, Raser, Lt. Gov. Karl Ohs, Kirk Miller, who is chairman of the Board of Public Education, and Speaker of the House Doug Mood, R-Seeley Lake. Another 10-25 people representing education entities in the state will be appointed at the end of June.

Montana’s school funding system has been the subject of controversy for several decades. A number of school districts sued in the 1980s, contending the state funding formula at the time prevented schools from meeting the constitutional mandate for equal education opportunities. The Montana Supreme Court struck down that formula in 1989, and a special legislative session later that year came up with a different system.

That system was replaced by the current system in 1993. A number of school districts are again threatening to sue the state over the current funding formula.

http://www.mtstandard.com/articles/2003/06/03/newsstate/hjjgjdjgjbhcej.txt