Say what you will about the School Trustees, but a majority of them seem to be very tuned in to public sentiment.
Last night, the School Board rejected a $1.2 million elementary levy by a 4-2 vote, with only Bob Moretti and big government liberal Don Ryan dissenting. Ryan is currently up for re-election.
As the tide seemed to turn against a $1 million technology levy, Cyndi Baker (you read that right) urged the Board to still float a tech levy, but to halve the amount. That’s exactly what happened, and the motion passed unanimously.
Baker said, ‘I think a million dollar ask was going to be a lot, but I think half a million people could relate to. I think people understand the need for technology, and feel lost without it, so we need to have our students prepared properly and we need to give them the tools.’
It’s heartening to see Baker and the trustees work together on a comprise, one that invests in our kids’ future while at the same time respects taxpayers. This technology levy would “increase the taxation on a $150,000 home in Great Falls by $13.97 a year – or about $1.16 a month,” according to the Tribune.
A number of Westside residents received a surprise in their mailboxes this week, in the form of the following 12-page packet. In it, the author takes issue with Tammy Lacey and GFPS for the School District’s construction plans at the Little Russell School site. The District’s operations facility does not conform with county zoning requirements.
One Westsider (who was kind enough to share the material with us) remarked that s/he was “appalled” because, “Jane Weber doesn’t give a damn about what any of us have to say. We all signed a petition saying we didn’t want this in our neighborhood, but all Jane cares about is giving Tammy the good news. I guess we’re not as important as Tammy.”
At the GFPS budget meeting (which is still underway), the budget committee recommended a $1.2 million levy for elementary schools, as well as a $1 million technology levy. That’s two levies, for $2.2 million, proposed not even six months after voters approved a nearly $100 million school bond.
The full Board of Trustees will vote on whether or not to send both levies to taxpayers next Monday.
In today’s “The Edge,” the Tribune’s editorial board took issue with Republican Rep. Jeff Essmann’s opposition to a mail-in ballot for Montana’s U.S. House special election.
The Tribune raises a legitimate point, one we agree with:
Shouldn’t we want the most people, regardless of party, voting?
Commenter and occasional contributor to this blog, Rick Tryon, wrote the following:
‘Shouldn’t we want the most people, regardless of party, voting?…
…The counties still are reeling from the $3 million spent on the Nov. 8 general election, which was the most expensive statewide election on record, and are looking to find a way to cut costs in a special election to replace Zinke.
That seems smart to us.’
The problem with the GF Tribune opining and lecturing here is that they are being selective in their concern for wanting ‘the most people…voting’ and ways ‘to cut costs’ in elections.
The Trib editorial board raised no such concerns when the GFPS held a special bond election a month before the General Election last year costing tax payers an extra $25,000 or so and yielding a lower turnout than the General Election. [emphasis added]
We received the following message from Aaron Weissman this morning, and are happy to help spread the word. Please take a minute and let the School District know which academic calendar you like best, or, dislike the least:
“The school district calendar committee (aka, the “make everyone unhappy” committee) is working on the 2018-2019 calendar and have narrowed choices down to three options. One has a long winter break, one has a long Spring break and one has a long Summer break. The three options can be found here: http://bit.ly/2018-2019options
Can you please publish this and the community survey location? We would like to try and accommodate as many opinions as possible for the 2018-2019 calendar. The deadline for responses is February 29.”
In an article about this Tuesday night’s GFPS budget meeting, Trib reporter Sarah Dettmer pointed to rising K-8 enrollment, but less high school students in the district this year:
According to the final 2016-2017 school year enrollment numbers, Great Falls Public Schools saw an increase in K-8 enrollment and a decrease in the number of high school students.
According to the School District’s own Power Point presentation, though, school enrollment for grades 9-12 actually increased in 2016-2017.
GFPS: 24 more HS students in 2016-2017 than in 2015-2016
Because funds allocated from the state of Montana are based on enrollment figures, the claim that the District is battling (partially) declining enrollment leads one to believe that GFPS — through no fault of its own — must now make due with less. Query: Do you think this “reporting” would help or hurt the District’s ability to sell a mill levy to the public?
What the Tribune did get right, however, is that HB 191will reduce school districts’ funding this year (although inflationary increases will rise the following year):
The original bill inflationary increases offered 1.37 percent for 2017-2018 and 1 percent for 2018-2019. However, the bill has been amended to offer .5 percent for 2017-2018 and 1.87 percent for 2018-2019.
HB 191 was passed unanimously in the Senate and 93-2 in the House as amended by the Senate. Typically, HB 191 is a bill rammed through the Legislature and signed into law quickly, so school districts have plenty of lead time to budget for the upcoming fiscal year. Even the MEA-MFT lauded HB 191 as “a hopeful sign for k-12 school funding.”
What is the District to do, then? GFPS Director of Business Operations Brian Patrick laid out the options:
Patrick said the district can make up this deficit through budget cuts, reducing the number of staff, utilizing reserves or by running a mill levy.
It’s no secret: revenue is down in Montana this year. And while Democrats and Republicans may not agree on what to cut from the state budget, there is at least bi-partisan consensus that reducing spending is necessary. Even Governor Bullock proposed $74 million in budget cuts over the next two years. If the two political parties can agree on belt tightening at the state level, shouldn’t Montana school districts, and in particular, Great Falls Public Schools — recently a benefactor of overwhelming community generosity — exercise similar fiscal restraint?
Three School Board seats are up for grabs in this year’s Great Falls school election, set for May 2, 2017. The election will be held by mail. Thus far, according to the Commissioner of Political Practices’ website, incumbents Jan Cahill (Board Chairman) and Don Ryan have filed for re-election. Trustee Jason Brantley is also up for another three-year term.
Cahill’s a good hand, and should be a shoe-in not only to win, but to receive the most overall votes. Ryan and Brantley should be formidable as well, as incumbents traditionally dominate Great Falls school elections.
If you’re considering serving on the School Board, there’s still plenty of time to decide.
Something doesn’t fit. After Monday night’s budget presentation by Great Falls Public Schools, the Great Falls Tribune painted a grim picture of the District’s per-pupil technology spending compared to other AA school districts. Sarah Dettmer for the Tribune reported:
According to data collected from fiscal year 2016, Great Falls is spending $21.66 per student for technology. GFPS is the second-lowest for per-student technology spending of all the AA schools. In comparison, Kalispell spends $182.03 per student for technology and Billings spends $127.72.
However, earlier in her article, Dettmer wrote:
GFPS has a technology budget of $2,389,107. The general fund accounts for 84 percent of the budget with an additional 9 percent paid for by the district’s existing $225,000 technology levy. The remainder of the budget is paid for by the state and the E-rate rebate program. Half of the budget is allocated to pay salaries.
So, how is it that “Great Falls is spending $21.66 per student for technology”? If GFPS has a technology budget of $2,389,107 and 10,471 enrolled students (according to the slide presented by GFPS and seen below), doesn’t that mean GFPS actually spends $228.16 per student on tech — in other words, more than ten times the amount reported in the Tribune?
This disconnect exists because the formula presented by the School District, and utilized but not disclosed by Dettmer, is based solely on the technology levy amount, which, again, comprises only 9 percent of GFPS’ total technology budget. But the reporter did not reference this slide, nor did she identify what “data collected from fiscal year 2016” she used to conclude that “Great Falls is spending $21.66 per student for technology.” It’s highly misleading.
Let’s compare two statements made by local journalists and see which one is more accurate:
Sarah Dettmer’s:
According to data collected from fiscal year 2016, Great Falls is spending $21.66 per student for technology.
According to data collected in fiscal year 2016, the Great Falls Public School District has the lowest technology levy among AA schools across Montana. The district’s current permanent technology levy of $225,000 breaks down to $21.66 per student.
Roley correctly attributes the disparity to the levy amounts, whereas Dettmer omits this critical fact, allowing Tribune readers to believe that GFPS is spending barely more than $20 per kid, no matter the funding. Rather than framing an issue on just 9 percent of the data (a small sample that only benefits the School District’s position in establishing the need for a levy increase), shouldn’t journalists consider 100 percent of the relevant data?
Slide 22 from GFPS’ Monday presentation provides this necessary context. It compares total technology funding of the Great Falls and Missoula school districts. (Although interestingly, GFPS’s figure here, $2,223,748.73, does not jive with Dettmer’s stated total of $2,389,107. Whatever.) Assuming the number of total expenditures for Missoula Public Schools is correct, then Missoula’s levy of $1,623,403 comprises 55 percent of its technology budget, while GFPS’ levy makes up only 9 percent. On the other hand, Great Falls spends 90 percent from its general fund, or more than double Missoula’s 44 percent.
What this boils down to, then, is in large part a question of how school technology is funded. Even though Missoula Public Schools — a district with fewer enrolled students — faces higher taxes and a generally higher cost of living than Great Falls, GFPS can still point to comparatively less total technology funds. GFPS also has a credible argument to make in that, if voters approve a larger tech levy, that would free up hundreds of thousands (if not a million or more) of general fund dollars for other priorities.
According to Roley’s report, Tom Hering, GFPS director of instructional technology, will encourage a larger tech levy:
The district has two options for funding technology as it prepares the 2017-2018 school year budget.
It can continue using the current $225,000 permanent levy, which has no expiration. Or it can ask voters to approve a levy with a higher amount, and it would expire every 10 years. This would be a standalone levy that would get rid of the permanent levy.
Hering told KFBB he would recommend the latter in order for the district to keep up with technology needs in the district.
Perhaps the School District, if successful in passing such a levy, would then need less money from the general fund, and decline to run a separate, operational levy as a way of thanking taxpayers for approving last year’s nearly $99 million school bond.
A philosopher once said that we are really three quite different people; the one we see as our self, the one others see, and the one we really are. All very different and the first two are merely reflections.
The recent discourse concerning the Q & A session between representatives of the Great Falls Public Schools and the newly elected Montana Superintendent of Public Instruction, Elsie Arntzen, was not congratulatory, or welcoming. The event seems to be a spot-on reflection of the discourse surrounding President Trump’s Secretary of Education nominee, Betsy DeVos, who has been ripped nationally as Arntzen has in Montana.
Do you think the shoot-from-the-hip comments and condescending narrative directed at both women just might have some to do with their similar pro-voucher, pro-charter schools, and most importantly, pro-choice education positions? Do you think just maybe the NEA and the MEA have leveled their sights on Elsie and Betsy? One important feature is the emphasis and the substance of the word public when referring to education in our state as well as nationally. There is a not so new paradigm that suggests that the government’s program of public education for our children may not be the only, or the most successful methodology. When a country spends the most money per student on public education, yet ranks 29thin the civilized world in educational achievement, its structure probably ought to be up for review.
If pro-choice, charter schools, and vouchers have shown positive results, why not let this shift universally seek its level? The answer seems obvious; public education is a big business. Any move to divert taxpayer funds from the public education business is viewed as a threat to those running the business.
The truth is that parochial schools have been around since the beginning of our country’s history and the best colleges and universities are private institutions, many of which were founded based on religious principles. Why, then, should parents and students be financially penalized for exercising pro-choice educational freedoms when it concerns their children?
No matter the venue, existing and new educational methodology must be positively responsive to the new world we live in. It is well established that education on all levels must advance two basic important tasks, creativity and innovation. Without a strong emphasis on these, our children will not successfully meet the demands of the 21st century marketplace and our country will be at a significant disadvantage in the new world economy.
Yes, and how we design our schools can affect the education outcome we must achieve. Gone is the cellular and static concept we have duplicated in the past — encouraging movement, sensory stimulation and interdisciplinary study is the future. To do this, working together with open minds is absolutely necessary. Unfortunately, the left’s assaults on DeVos and Arntzen are instructive of knee-jerk partisanship, and ultimately, a willingness to place agendas above policy while shamelessly using our children as political pawns.
Sarah Dettmer, the Great Falls Tribune’s education reporter, seems to have it out for Elsie Arntzen.
Yesterday, Dettmer published a heavily self-referential, self-congratulatory article to explain away some of the blowback from her hit job on the freshly-elected Montana Superintendent of Public Instruction, Republican Elsie Arntzen.
Dettmer writes:
Then, Great Falls Public Schools Superintendent Tammy Lacey stood up to ask her question about federally funded preschools. It was a tense moment. The biggest player in education in Great Falls was politely, but pointedly challenging the biggest player in education in Montana.
As further research on Dettmer’s part would indicate, there is virtually nothing that Arntzen — a state official — can do to change federal funding of preschools. And there was nothing “polite” about Lacey cheaply invoking Arntzen’s granddaughter to frame what should have been a substantive question. Evidently more concerned with gamesmanship than with policy, the GFPS Superintendent seemed to relish poking at the OPI chief.
Nevertheless, Dettmer established her moral authority as a journalist to intervene — against Arntzen:
The fact is the story changed. As a journalist, I cannot sit in the back of the room and listen to a publicly elected official avoid her constituents’ questions and then go back to the office and not address it. It is my job to hold officials accountable for their words and actions.
Dettmer conceded that the crowd reaction affected her reporting.
I focused more on the audience reaction than I typically would in an article, but in this case I thought it was important to bring the reader into the room and to capture the palpable emotions. This was not a typical introductory meeting.
What exactly did Dettmer expect? One of the worst-kept secrets in Helena is that Democrats, Eric Feaver and the MEA-MFT, can’t stand Arntzen (a Republican), and that — in this venue — Arntzen was speaking to a room full of hostile administrators and union members who detest her. Yet, Dettmer deliberately chose to omit this necessary context.
She concluded in a similar vein:
Despite Arntzen’s claims in other publications that I misinterpreted her words through my transcripts, I look forward to working with the superintendent over the coming years and hope we can move forward with a professional relationship.
But, I will continue to hold her and her administration accountable for their words and actions just as I hope she does for me.
On this, Dettmer isn’t wrong. Arntzen, a government official, should be held accountable — and so, too, should Tammy Lacey, the School Board, and Great Falls Public Schools.
But by singling out Arntzen’s administration — and no one else’s — what does that tell you about which way the Tribune leans?
