Open-Enrollment Policy Creating ‘Heavy’ Burden, School Administrators Report

Five months after a new state law allowing for open enrollment across Montana’s public schools went into effect, school administrators in the Flathead Valley say that the policy has done little to boost out-of-district student enrollment numbers, and has created an increasingly burdensome administrative load for school staff.

House Bill 203, passed by the state Legislature last year, rewrote Montana’s code governing out-of-district school attendance, requiring public schools accept any student who wishes to attend from out-of-district and who meets certain criteria. While in the past, parents may have been charged for out-of-district tuition, the law placed the tuition burden on students’ home districts, rather than the parents. The law, which was passed nearly unanimously by the state Legislature, also created an extensive system of rules and regulations for how districts must operate when considering the applications of out-of-district students. 

During a Jan. 30 hearing in the Legislature, the bill’s sponsor, Rep. David Bedey, R-Hamilton, said the bill is “designed to empower parents as they make decisions about their children’s’ education.”

Yet across the Flathead Valley, school administrators say that out-of-district student enrollment has remained flat, and that the law has created a complicated structure of rules and regulations that have bogged down school offices and, at times, discouraged parents from engaging with the process at all.  

“The number of students that we’ve accepted and who are attending out-of-district is very close to the exact same as it was this time last year,” Laurie Barron, superintendent of the Evergreen School District, said. 

“It’s not changing who gets to come here. It’s just a much more formalized process, and a lot more administrative tracking than what our previous process was.” 

In Evergreen, Barron said, non-resident families come to the district for a variety of reasons. Some are drawn to Evergreen’s teachers and programs, while others want to send their children to school closer to a parent’s workplace. 

Last year, 1,382 students in Flathead County attended public school in a district they did not reside in. 

“We’re excited that families see Evergreen as a school district they want their child to go to … That hasn’t changed,” Barron said. 

Prior to the implementation of House Bill 203, Evergreen had a district-specific policy for accepting out-of-district students, which involved requesting records from the child’s resident school and making an admission decision based on classroom capacity, among other factors. 

Now, Barron said, enrolling out-of-district students has become a multi-step process for parents and district administrators, one that has dissuaded some parents from even beginning the process at all. 

Under House Bill 203, the open-enrollment process begins with requiring parents to fill out a formal application. From there, districts must request files from the student’s resident district to evaluate their attendance record and any possible suspensions or expulsions, and then convene the school board to issue a decision. Districts can only deny a student on specific grounds, including if the student’s enrollment would push the school building beyond its physical capacity or if the student has a record of truancy, expulsions or multiple suspensions. School boards can also deny a student if their enrollment would “impede meeting goals, standards, or objectives of quality that the trustees have previously adopted in a plan for continuous educational improvement.” If a school board denies an out-of-district enrollment request, they must provide a specific reason to the parent or guardian, which must be discussed during a closed session of the school board. 

“The administrative burden is just heavy,” the Evergreen superintendent said. 

Shannon Marshall, superintendent/principal in Kila, a small, rural district that serves around 180 students, said the open enrollment policy is “putting a lot of additional stress on our business manager just to keep the paperwork accounted for.”

Prior to open enrollment, Kila, like Evergreen, accepted out-of-district students on a rolling basis, considering class sizes and enrollment numbers when accepting or denying students. 

At Kila, there has not been “a mass influx at all” of out-of-district students.

Fair-Mont-Egan Superintendent Brandy Carlenzoli called the process “very tedious” and said “there’s no guidance from the state.” 

At the end of the year, school districts will now bill out-of-district students’ home districts for tuition. Prior to the new law, school districts could choose to charge parents for out-of-district tuition. Parents and guardians can no longer be required to pay out-of-district tuition. 

School districts do not yet know how much they’ll have to pay other districts where their resident students attend school, as the tuition payments hinge on a complex set of calculations involving the student’s attendance, the district’s adopted general fund budget and mill levy rates. 

“I can’t even imagine the challenge once we get to the business-end and are actually generating tuition bills off of this,” Barron, of Evergreen, said. 

House Bill 203 was part of a slate of “school choice” legislation passed by the Legislature last year, which included the implementation of the state’s first public charter schools, two of which opened in Kalispell this fall. 

Ahead of the 2025 legislative session, education experts are expecting a host of school-related proposals to come before lawmakers, including reconfigurations to the state’s widely-criticized public school funding formula. 

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