Close to 150 parents, educators and legislators attended Monday night’s public education forum. The schedule of four community discussion meetings organized by Montana’s Office of Public Instruction (OPI) concluded in Great Falls Monday, with the large majority of audience members voicing support for local teachers and administrators, and expressing deep concerns.
Superintendent of Public Instruction Elsie Arntzen opened the “Bridging the Communication Between Schools and Families” forum by outlining OPI’s budget priorities, noting that Montana’s 68th Legislative Session would open in less than two weeks.
“I am asking for $2 billion to fund our public school system,” Arntzen said of the upcoming biennium budget request. “I also have $600,000,000 that has a shelf life until 2024. That is the federal COVID relief money. They are for any use to aid a school. I’m asking our school leaders to invest them. They could be for a roof, for windows, for a water system or a heating and cooling system.”
According to information on OPI’s web site, the State of Montana spent $1.07 billion for education in 2022. Although Arntzen was unclear as to whether the $2 billion she mentioned for school funding was an exact figure, it appeared that OPI would not push for a significant increase in school funding over the next two years. In Nov. Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte announced he is proposing income and property tax cuts totaling more than $1 billion for 2023-2024 biennial budget.
The $600 million in remaining COVID-19 relief funding Arntzen referred to, from the federal funded CARES Act is not specifically target toward education, but is applicable to multiple statewide programs. State legislators have yet to award those monies.
Great Falls Public Schools Superintendent Tom Moore noted the fleeting opportunity the CARES Act money could afford schools statewide.
“We have a surplus right now because of the influx of federal funds, but that is one-time-only money that will soon subside,” Moore said. “In the short term we make look good on paper, but our concern … is the cliff that’s impending.”
“To use that (CARES Act money) for infrastructure needs and one-time-only costs can help us get through this time period, but is with the knowledge and understanding that we’re going to have to continue to fix and adjust our formula for school funding in Montana. It’s not going to change once the federal money goes away.”
Power School District Superintendent Nichole Pieper noted that any CARES funding her school receives is already allocated for a new heating system.
“Our heating system is on triage every day,” Pieper said, and thanked the school’s maintenace staff for rotating portable space heaters around the Power school’s classrooms to keep them from freezing.
“All of our COVID funding is allocated toward an new HVAC system that hopefully will be installed over the summer,” Pieper added, “but we’re still going to have to pay out of our general fund to get that HVAC system completely installed.”
GFPS Trustee Kim Skornogoski expressed deep concern about students lagging behind following COVID-19, noting that her own fifth-grade daughter has been struggling with mathematics since the pandemic began.
“There’s plenty of other students who don’t have the advantages she has that are struggling even more,” Skornogoski said. “I worry that when the pandemic money goes away that the struggle will still be there. I’m worried about all the kids once that money goes away.”
“I know that just to rollover our current staff and to pay for health insurance increases is going to be about $1 million,” she continued. “Our new teachers pay is among the worst in the nation. Montana spends $1,400 less per student than the national average. If the state doesn’t raise the cap, we’re talking about not giving the raises to teachers that they deserve, and not being able to cover the cost of recruiting new teachers. We’re facing something really scary.”
In a conversation with the Tribune prior to Monday’s community forum, Moore outlined the difficulties GFPS currently faces in recruiting and retaining school staff of all types.
“Eighty-six new teachers and close to 400 total employees were hired here last year,” Moore said of the Great Falls School District. “These were not additional hirings, these were replacement hires.”
In total, GFPS employs roughly 750 teachers out of 1,900 total school staff of all types.
“We are not fully staffed in many areas,” Moore said. “Teachers aides, custodians, para professionals, food service and special ed teachers, and we are always looking for bus drivers and crossing guards too.”
At Monday’s meeting, Moore went on the catalogue the increasing societal demands being placed upon Great Falls’ schools.
“Since I’ve been here for the last 15 years our poverty rates have doubled,” Moore said. “We have 11 Title 1 schools (federally funded for lower-income student populations) when I came here there were four. We have 475 homeless children in our community right now. We have mental health issues that are off the charts.”
“We spend hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in hiring therapists to come into our schools to work with kids,” he continued. “We spend $500,000 a year on a contract with the Great Falls Police Department to provide for school security. We have two health clinics in our schools because our children don’t have adequate healthcare.
“I think the real problem in our society that needs to be addressed at the legislative level and within communities is the erosion of our families, and the fact that a lot of our kids do not have the adequate supports that they need.”
Local State Representative Scot Kerns emphasized the importance of an “open dialogue” with schools, and suggested that GFPS is sometimes unresponsive to parents’ concerns.
“It seems to kind of go one direction and not the other,” Kerns said of the community dialogue with schools.
“We have a tremendous amount of transparency in this school district,” Moore said in response. “Our business operations director publishes about a 55-page document every year that outlines all the detail of our budgets, we have open forums that the trustees host – “
“I’ve been to those forums,” Kerns interjected.
“You have not come to a school board meeting and asked the questions in that public forum and looked for those answers,” Moore shot back. “There have been a number of legislators and candidates that have spent the time to go into our schools, follow our administrators, sit with our teachers and understand what’s going on in our public schools right now. “
The loudest applause of the evening was saved for a veteran teacher who spoke near the end of the meeting about the need for more qualified therapists in schools.
“In the almost 25 years I’ve been doing my job I’ve been seeing more and more kids in my classroom with psychological and mental health issues,” she said. “I love those kids and support them as much as I possible can, but we as teachers are not given the skills to deal with those issues.”
“I know how hard our administrators work,” the teacher continued. “They deserve every single penny that they get. Despite COVID we kept our schools open … to be there with our kids whether it was remote or off-site. I applaud all of our staff members for doing the best they can.
“Instead of beating them up we should give them credit for doing the best that we can to take care of kids through a really tough two years.”
