The number of public school districts poised to benefit from a touted legislative program designed to address the state’s lasting educator shortage could drop by half as compared to last year, according to records reviewed by Lee Montana.
Passed during the 2021 legislative session, House Bill 143, dubbed the TEACH Act, created incentive payments for districts that increase starting teacher pay above certain benchmarks. The idea is that bumping up pay will make it easier to recruit teachers.
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Of Montana’s 396 public school districts, 99 increased salaries enough for the 2023-2024 school year to meet the law’s threshold. These districts received $3,566 for every educator they employed in the first three years of their teaching career. Even that was a slow uptake relative to the legislation’s ambition.
Looking ahead to the 2024-2025 school year, only 50 districts are currently expected to receive the additional funding.
But school administrators from all over the state say this isn’t because they didn’t increase pay or don’t employ early career teachers. Rather, they assert, the state education agency failed to communicate to districts about new paperwork they would be required to complete in order to prove eligibility for the TEACH Act benefits. Some districts stand to lose tens of thousands of dollars that would otherwise bulk up their general fund budgets.
“Schools are already struggling,” said Shelley Turner, executive director of the Montana Association of School Business Officials. “Now this is just one more hurdle.”
Lee Montana obtained a letter penned on April 11 by Ryan Osmundson, director of the Governor’s Office of Program Planning, to State Superintendent Elsie Arntzen asking the agency to reopen the application.
“As you know, it is not uncommon for (the Office of Public Instruction) to request additional information from districts throughout the year in order to process funding allocations,” he wrote.
Days later, OPI offered the opportunity to submit data for TEACH Act eligibility to those 20 districts.
Every fall, school districts submit a slew of data about enrollment, employment and other metrics to OPI to help inform how much funding each receives from the state the following academic year. OPI launched a revamped data collection system during the fall, but according to MASBO, it neglected to make district officials adequately aware of the new TEACH Act procedures.
OPI did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Bonner School District has ensured its starting teacher salaries clear the bar set by the Legislature each year since the law went into effect. They’ve benefited from the incentive payments as a result.
Going into the next academic year, the district had estimated it would receive about $22,000 for its efforts. But Superintendent Jim Howard and District Clerk Carrie Ruff didn’t complete the correct application by the December deadline, saying they didn’t even know it existed. It wasn’t until they reviewed their preliminary budget allocations from OPI a few months later that they realized the error.
According to correspondence reviewed by Lee Montana, OPI has given 20 schools a chance to right the wrong and re-apply for the TEACH Act subsidies. Bonner School District is not on that list.
“This is the first time I remember their dysfunction costing us money directly,” Howard said in an interview. “(It) has cost us a lot of money in terms of man hours. We’ve wasted the most time on just trying to get a human on the phone.”
Under Arntzen, OPI has been plagued by high turnover rates and escalating conflicts with legislators and local education officials. A 2022 audit from the Legislative Audit Division revealed that large numbers of vacant positions were putting the agency at risk of noncompliance with federal regulations. Members of the largest union of public employees issued a complaint earlier this year regarding mandatory work-from-home policies for OPI staff. Multiple parties have submitted letters citing Arntzen for an alleged failure to implement legislation including the Board of Public Education and the Legislative Education Interim Budget Committee, and a lawsuit was filed against the agency alleging failure to take action on public charter legislation.
Arntzen, who terms out of her role as superintendent this year, is running in a crowded GOP primary to represent Montana's second congressional district.
Howard, Turner and others have told Lee Montana they don’t fault the staff at the agency, but believe there have been institutional failures that have created difficult conditions.
OPI did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the claims from school administrators and MASBO.
MASBO provides training and resources to its 450-plus members who represent nearly all of Montana's public school districts to ensure they are equipped to handle the complicated world of school finance. Their role is even more important given the large number of new administrators in key district roles such as clerk.
Turner said the organization was unaware that OPI had created an application specific to the TEACH Act. MASBO regularly partners on training sessions with OPI. Turner said there was no mention of a data collection pipeline for the teacher pay subsidies other than the one school administrators would fill out as part of their annual budget planning efforts.
“I was a little frustrated,” she said.
MASBO believes the opportunity to submit the proper paperwork should be extended to all districts. Turner has offered to help them comply. She also asked OPI for access to this new form so that she could incorporate it into training sessions moving forward.
School boards typically approve district budgets in August, but most of the planning legwork is done earlier in the spring and summer. Renewals for teacher contracts are typically in June at the latest.
For some districts, not receiving the TEACH Act funding means jobs could be cut in order to balance the budget. Bonner School District, for example, would have to consider laying off a teacher’s aid or streamlining custodial staff hours.
“There are so many areas that they have already pared down to the bone,” Turner said. “Now they are trying to make deeper cuts, and that’s just hard. They are all hoping this is going to be rectified, and in the meantime, they will do the best they can with what they have — they always do.”