Great Falls, Montana News, Politics, & Commentary
H/T to The Electric’s Jenn Rowell, who broke the news:
As of now, Jan Cahill, Kim Skornogoski, and Bill Bronson are the leading vote-getters among school board candidates.
The operation levy stands at approximately 54.7% in favor with 45.3% opposed.
Over the course of this year’s school election, we have been critical of Great Falls Public Schools’ efforts to impose another permanent tax levy on the public.
More than one of our readers have asked us: is there anything E-City Beat does support?
In short, the answer is yes.
Broadly, we believe in fewer regulations, lower taxes, and whenever feasible, limited government.
More specifically, and although antithetical to the above, we would emphatically endorse a public safety levy in Great Falls.
For the better part of a decade, crime has risen in Great Falls. Nevertheless, our excellent police department remains dramatically understaffed.
On July 13, 2019, Rick Tryon posted to his Facebook page:
According to the FBI and other sources, the commonly accepted best officer-to-citizen ratio is between 16.7 and 20 sworn officers for every 10,000 in population, so Great Falls should have between 100-112 police officers. The Great Falls Police Department currently employs 88 officers.
Over the past five years, voters approved a $100 million school bond issue, as well as the formation of a $13 million park district.
School district backers often cite “economic development” as a reason to pass annual mill levies. The truth is, the voting public has already demonstrated tremendous generosity by investing in big ticket infrastructure items. However, our community has not realized an economic boom as a result. On the contrary, Great Falls has remained statistically stagnant.
The schools received a tenth of a billion dollar boon, the park and rec department hauled in over eight figures, but what good are new buildings and pristine parks if our community continues to become less safe?
We don’t often agree with the New York Times, but it is worth highlighting when they are correct. Three years ago, the Times argued that the single greatest factor in attracting a professional workforce is crime — not pay raises for school administrators.
“There are all sorts of potential other amenities, whether it’s cafes, restaurants, bars, nicer parks, better schools,” said Ingrid Gould Ellen, a professor of urban policy and planning at New York University.
“But a huge piece of it,” she said, “I think is crime.”
We agree.
If we want to welcome new community members to enjoy our city’s schools and parks system, it is high time we focus our attention, and yes, our resources where they should have been along: on public safety.
Does the Great Falls Public School system need a sober coach?
The school district’s affliction is addiction. It is addiction to the status quo. Addiction, no matter what form it takes, tears families, communities, and yes, education systems apart.
What is addiction and how does it affect the community when it strikes the GFPS school district?
Shahram Heshmat, PhD, and professor emeritus at the University of Illinois, defines addiction as a “diminished capacity to choose”, where poor decision-making “reflects the interaction of two distinct decision systems in conflict with each other”; the deliberative (goal-directed), and the automatic (habit-based system). “Addiction is a consequence of perturbed balance in favor of the automatic system”.
Do you see habitual decisions to continually seek operational levies from taxpayers by school district administrators? Why are additional funds needed every single year to meet over-budget requirements?
One answer is that with declining enrollment numbers, and with fixed, or growing infrastructure costs the school district gets less than it needs from State tax allocations.
You have no doubt heard the much advertised “80/20” revenue rule for school districts; 80% from the State and 20% from local property owners. The reference is totally misleading. The State places limits on school district base budgets and also the amount for levies that are used to make up deficiencies above base budgets. It is meant to limit the burden on taxpayers by school districts that are living beyond their means.
But the serious addiction problem is further compounded by an absence of leadership on the part of school administrators. Have you witnessed any evidence that these are creative, innovative, out-of-the-box problem solvers?
The only thing you can be sure of is that they are addicted to their over-the-top salaries, taxpayers be damned.
We must not allow ourselves to be lulled into complacency by a school administration which habitually tells us that it’s only more money that will keep the education system in Great Falls afloat.
We must not believe that our best days are over, and that we need to accept mediocrity for a district that was once the envy of the State.
We cannot reward failure when it comes to correcting the trajectory of an unsustainable part of our community — education. Paying school district administrators more will not help, it will only make interdiction harder and change less likely.
Will we be sober coaches, or will we be enablers?
Montana Governor Steve Bullock has announced that the state will begin easing restrictions put in place due to COVID-19 starting this coming Sunday and Monday, April 26 & 27, with churches and retail businesses allowed to re-open.
This will be followed by bars and restaurants having the green light to open up on May 4.
The Governor has left it up to local school districts to decide whether to open schools back up. The Great Falls Public School board is seeking input on the issue from local parents and will be meeting this Monday evening, May 27.
Click here to read the key points and criteria for Montana’s Phase One Re-opening for churches, businesses and schools.
Please take a minute to weigh in on our poll questions.
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As we receive our ballots for the school election, I just wanted to thank the candidates who responded to our question.
This blog has been critical of GFPS and the school board, so each of the candidates knew they were likely to face criticism from our readers (their current and potential constituents). Nevertheless, three of the four candidates wrote back with clear and direct responses to our inquiry.
Thank you to Bill Bronson, Kim Skornogoski, and Jan Cahill. While we may not agree on the issues, you were all responsive to a sincere policy question — and that’s exactly what the voting public deserves.
The school district, by way of its political action committee, Kids! Education Yes! (KEY), has been driving home two major talking points in its campaign for the levy. At best, the arguments are highly misleading.
First, there is the claim that Great Falls Public Schools has cut over 100 teachers in the past 10 years as a result of failed levies. By implication, KEY would have voters believe that our schools are run by a skeleton crew, needlessly stripped down by child-hating idiots who cruelly refused to acquiesce to GFPS’ annual money grabs — mill levies that, lest anyone forgets, stick to our tax bills permanently once they are passed.
According to the district’s political operatives, teachers lost their jobs (also an assault on children), all because you were too selfish to forsake one latte a month.
The truth, however, is much more nuanced.
In the 2001-2002 academic year, GFPS employed 803.81 FTEs. That year, those employees ran a district with an enrollment of 11,643.
Fast forward to 2019-2020, where enrollment sits at 10,500. The FTE count? 737.
In other words, the number of employees declined along with enrollment, a perfectly logical outcome. Moreover, while it’s true that some teachers were cut in the past decade, it is also true that teachers were hired over the same time period. Any organization as large as Great Falls Public Schools naturally realizes HR-related ebbs and flows, beyond just the cuts that KEY billboards on their mailers and on their comment-free Facebook page.
In 2009-2010, the district employed 799 FTEs. KEY doesn’t want to tell voters about the district’s net change of 62 less FTEs — hardly the “more than 100” talking point that is made ad nauseam ad infinitum. KEY also refuses to properly contextualize this shift by admitting that this modest decrease in employment coincides, dating back to 2001, with similarly decreasing enrollment.
Second, levy proponents love to whine that voters have passed only two levies in the past 10-12 years. It is technically true, as School Board Trustee Kim Skornogoski wrote in her candidate profile, that “Great Falls has passed two levies in 12 years.” Indeed, operational levies were passed in 2010 and 2014.
Do you know what else is true, but is carefully omitted from the district’s narrative?
In 2016, voters approved a $100 million bond levy.
Of course, you won’t read about that in any of the district’s “woe is us, the rubes in town have it out for the kids” propaganda leaflets. In fact, you’ll read just the opposite. According to KEY, it’s all about the “cuts,” and how they continue to decimate our community.
“These cuts are hurting our children, our teachers and our community’s ability to grow and attract new people to our city.”
KIDS’ EDUCATION YES!
We hear this same tired line every year. I asked this before, and I will do it again: “After Great Falls voters generously passed a $100 million bond levy in 2016 — an amount 50-100 times greater than the average operational levy — which new businesses came to Great Falls as a result of this considerable investment? What, exactly, were the measurable impacts? Did an economic renaissance sweep our community without anyone noticing?”
RELATED: WILL BUSINESSES REJECT GREAT FALLS IF WE DON’T PASS THE SCHOOL LEVY?
I won’t hold my breath waiting for an answer.
I recently emailed all of the School Board candidates and asked them the following question:
Q: In this time of crisis when residents are out of work, are you in favor of acting as Bozeman and Belgrade did by cancelling, or rescheduling the levy for a later time?
E-City Beat will publish each of the candidates’ responses, completely unedited, and in the order in which we receive them.
The third and final candidate to respond was Jan Cahill. Below is his answer in its entirety:
A: No. I am very optimistic the COVID-19 crisis will soon be resolved and our economy will very quickly rebound. After many hours of public meetings reviewing school budgets over six months the Board of Trustees on March 9, unanimously determined there was a need to request community support of a levy for our elementary and middle schools. As is the case with every operational levy request, the voters make the final decision. Obviously, I hope the majority of the voters say yes.
Tom Moore, the Superintendent of Schools for GFPS, pockets a cool $160,000 a year — not including a robust benefits package.
His predecessor, Tammy Lacey, never made annually in her tenure what Moore makes now.
(Incidentally, has Moore accomplished anything close to what Lacey ever did? Does GFPS believe in equal pay? Is the School Board sexist? The District loves to parrot the talking point that it is “always cutting”. How, then, was increasing Moore’s salary from Lacey’s an example of “cutting”? But I digress …)
The fact is, Moore and his poo-bah’s on The Hill are relentlessly committed to fattening their already considerable salaries at a time in which a global pandemic has plunged so much of the community into financial uncertainty, if not total ruin, by pushing yet another school levy.
We all know of someone who has recently lost their job. How sympathetic are Moore and Co. to this grim reality? Well, they want a raise, of course. And they want you to pay for it.
And it’s not just Moore who stands to get richer. Take a look at the other salaries of GFPS administrators:
As superintendent, the buck ultimately stops with Moore. Policy — as finally enacted by the Rubber Stamp School Board — is always driven from the top.
When asked by a constituent about the timing of pursuing yet another permanent tax increase on the public despite historic unemployment, Moore wrote to her:
Thank you Jeni for your input. We have discussed the pros and cons of continuing to move forward with the Levy. We are sensitive to the current economic situation in the US and locally. The financial needs of the district to provide a high quality education for our children have not diminished with the recent events related to COVID-19. If anything, the needs of our children and teachers will be even greater when school resumes. Your concerns have been noted.
Respectfully,
Thomas G. Moore Superintendent
“Sensitive”?
What Moore and the School District are doing is decidely insensitive.
It is wrong.
And it is greed of the highest order.
I recently emailed all of the School Board candidates and asked them the following question:
Q: In this time of crisis when residents are out of work, are you in favor of acting as Bozeman and Belgrade did by cancelling, or rescheduling the levy for a later time?
E-City Beat will publish each of the candidates’ responses, completely unedited, and in the order in which we receive them.
The second candidate to respond was Kim Skornogoski. Below is her answer in its entirety:
A: As a working parent, the past four weeks have been a struggle. And I know for so many other families it’s significantly harder – they are single parents, they are trying to teach children at four different grade levels, they fear the growing stack of bills.
But these weeks have also opened my eyes to how hard teachers and our public schools work to give every child in our community the best education we can afford. My 7-year-old daughter had lessons online within a day of schools closing and a packet to work on within a week. Her teacher creates three recorded video lessons daily and another live teaching session online. And she calls my daughter to offer caring pep talks.
Despite all these efforts, it’s clear this isn’t the same as being in the classroom.
It’s also clear that schools matter.
Many struggling students don’t have access to technology or have engaged parents encouraging them to keep learning. When school resumes, they will need more help and more individual attention. They need local support more than ever.
Great Falls passed two levies in 12 years. Other school districts repeatedly pass levies and consequently other Montana AA schools are spending as much as $3,000 more per student. Last year, the school board chose to not ask for a levy and instead pulled money from reserves to prevent more deep cuts. We can’t afford to do this again, and we can’t afford more cuts.
In 10 years, the district has cut 100 teachers, and additional staff including librarians, aides and administrators. Today’s budget has not matched inflation. And the state funding formula only works for schools with steady enrollment increases or sharp declines – not stable or slow growing districts like Great Falls.
For elementary students, that means more crowded classrooms, less individual attention to push bright students and help struggling ones. For older students, it means competing for jobs and scholarships against graduates from schools that offer more opportunities.
Teacher training budgets have been shredded. Books and curriculum are outdated. Afterschool supports are gone. All of this impacts students and educational outcomes.
I know there’s a lot of discussion around administrator salaries. The state mandates the number of administrators based on the number of buildings and number of students. If we don’t meet their standards, we lose state funding. Looking at the four biggest school districts in the state – Great Falls has the lowest superintendent salary and is last in the number of district administrators. Great Falls has the second most students. District administration makes up only 5.35 percent of the budget. That’s again the least of the four comparable districts.
State law gives school districts one day annually to hold elections. This election falls at possibly the worst time, but I hope voters will choose to make a long-term investment in our kids and our community.
Voters have an opportunity to send a message:
To teachers – we appreciate you.
To students – we care about your futures.
And to businesses – we will invest in our community.
Investing in our children, their education and their future can’t wait.
You won’t read about this in the local mainstream media, but the federal government is coming to the rescue of Great Falls Public Schools.
As a result of the multi-trillion dollar federal response to the coronavirus, GFPS stands to receive $2,382,452.53 (p. 3 from the embedded .pdf via the Montana Office of Public Instruction).
Of particular note, on p.1: “School districts will have broad latitude on how to spend these funds.”
Thanks to Sen. Llew Jones (R-Conrad) for sending this to one of our readers, who promptly sent it to E-City Beat.
Of course, the School District is fully cognizant of what they will get — over $600,000 more than the permanent tax levy ($1.75 million) they are seeking to impose on all of us.
They still want the levy anyway.
