Montana Education group fumes over inaction by State

Oct. 1 has come and gone without a plan for fixing Montana’s school funding system, education advocates lamented Thursday at the state’s annual teacher convention in Missoula.

"We’re in desperate need of gubernatorial and legislative action right now," Eric Feaver, president of the Montana Education Association-Montana Federation of Teachers, said at Sentinel High School. "The (Quality Schools Interim) Committee has only produced the bare outline of a radically different, completely untested, potentially destructive school funding scheme."

Gov. Brian Schweitzer’s suggestion that he may not call a special legislative session in December was equally upsetting to MEA-MFT speakers.

Feaver said Schweitzer and the committee have failed to appreciate the solutions offered by the Montana Quality Education Coalition, whose successful legal challenge to the state’s education funding system forced all this legislative review in the first place.

The Montana Supreme Court set an Oct. 1 deadline for producing a funding formula the Legislature could enact, he said, and that deadline has been missed.

By ROB CHANEY
Missoulian

Full Story: http://missoulian.com/articles/2005/10/21/news/local/news02.txt

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Gazette opinion: Staff + buildings + books + technology = quality

The Quality Schools Committee must go back to its beginning to find workable answers.

Senate Bill 152, approved by the 2005 Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Brian Schweitzer, defined the "educationally relevant factors" that the committee must include in the basic system of free quality public education mandated by the Montana Constitution. The solution must include all those educationally relevant components.

Montana schools, large and small, need improved funding to recruit and retain all essential employees, such as teachers, administrators, nurses, classroom aides, custodians, secretaries, cooks and bus drivers. Schools need money for utilities, building maintenance, repair and expansion. They need money for books, technology, classroom supplies and insurance. All of these things are necessary to operate good, safe schools.

The much-discussed idea for a $4,000 classroom payment could be part of a solution, but how much that payment helps depends on how a classroom is defined. Would a classroom be 30 students, 10 or fewer? Would $4,000 per classroom be enough to allow districts that have low salaries to boost those salaries into the competitive range? Would $4,000 be enough to cover growing maintenance costs in districts that have maintained salaries at the expense of facilities?

Full Story: http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?id=1&display=rednews/2005/10/21/build/opinion/50-gaz-op.inc

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