Why Some Districts Opted Out of Montana’s High-profile STARS Act

A reflective silence descended on the Broadus school board May 12 as trustees in this southeast Montana district weighed whether to participate in a new statewide effort to raise starting teacher pay. The moment came after nearly half an hour of open-ended discussion about the potential impacts of signing on, underscoring the complexity of a law the 2025 Legislature spent months honing.

Recalling the meeting in a recent interview with Montana Free Press, board Chair Rob Jones said there wasn’t a palpable shift in momentum one way or the other as trustees bounced questions and concerns off one another. But in the absence of a motion to join in, Jones took the prolonged silence as an indication of the board’s consensus, and Broadus became one of the 25 districts statewide to opt out of Montana’s high-profile STARS Act.

“When it came right down to it and we called for a vote and no one spoke up to move that we adopt it, that was kind of the turning point,” Jones said.

Trustees in Broadus and the state’s roughly 400 public school districts were up against a May 15 deadline to signal their commitment to implementing the STARS Act, this spring’s banner piece of bipartisan education legislation. According to the Office of Public Instruction, roughly 94% of those districts signed on, indicating in writing their willingness to work toward meeting the starting teacher salary benchmarks required under the law — estimated around $41,500 in the first year — in order to qualify for additional state funding.

For the most part, the remaining districts who chose not to participate in the law’s first year were among Montana’s smallest elementaries, with student populations ranging from six or seven children to a few dozen. At least two of those included on OPI’s list were small rural districts that are no longer operating due to a lack of students. Broadus constituted the largest of the group, with a combined K-12 enrollment of 222. 

Superintendent Jim Hansen told MTFP this week the district did initially participate in the STARS Act’s forerunner — the TEACH Act, a voluntary incentive program signed into law in 2021 — which allowed Broadus to offer a slightly more competitive starting teacher wage. The district’s starting pay for teachers next fall will be $35,153, he said, a slight drop from last year due to the switch from the TEACH Act to STARS.

Hansen estimated the district would have had to raise wages for 11 of its 24 teaching staff to qualify for the extra infusion of state funding through STARS, but said the board expressed concern about the sustainability of such a salary adjustment should the Legislature change state funding levels in the future. Hansen recalled trustees asking him how Broadus would respond if the financial responsibility ever fell more heavily to local taxpayers, and while Hansen is confident the district would be in a good position for the next few years, he couldn’t predict what the long-term picture might look like.

“The intent was noble in the Legislature, but I don’t know what they’re going to do five years from now, six years from now,” Hansen said. “I don’t know if it’s sustainable.”

State leaders behind the STARS Act sought to assuage such concerns throughout the middle of May. The Montana School Boards Association — whose executive director, Lance Melton, was among the crafters of the bill — attempted to assure district officials that the increased state dollars designed to fund salary boosts were not a one-time thing but rather were baked into the state’s education funding formula. And only a fraction of the $100 million requested by Gov. Greg Gianforte and approved by the Legislature for the first two years of STARS was needed to close the gap between current starting teacher salaries and the new law’s benchmarks. Roughly three quarters of that amount was aimed at helping districts overcome inflation-related budget pressures and avoid further cuts to staff and educational programs. 

Melton told MTFP via email that there appears to be a “misconception” that the entirety of STARS funding was flagged for starting pay increases. Citing recent data from the Montana Department of Labor and Industry, he clarified that only an estimated $5.6 million of that funding would be required to raise the base salaries of all qualifying teachers statewide to meet the STARS benchmarks.

“In addition to supporting new educators, an equally important goal of the bill was to address the growing inflation gap that has developed between 2020 and 2024,” Melton wrote. “It’s important to note that the total funding allocated—$55 million annually—allows for significant flexibility in its distribution. Approximately 20% of that funding is designated specifically for raising teacher salaries to meet the legally incentivized minimums. The remaining amounts were left to the discretion of individual school districts, empowering them to allocate these resources according to their unique needs and priorities.”

OPI too conducted considerable outreach, contacting all districts in the state to try and explain the underlying complexities of the STARS Act and share a message reiterated throughout the session that the bill was not just about raising teacher pay but about improving student access to quality educators.

“The Office of Public Instruction team had just one week, from the governor’s signing [May 8], to implement and communicate the details of this bill to the local education agencies,” OPI spokesperson McKenna Gregg told MTFP via email. “This is an incredible achievement.”

Still, Broadus wasn’t alone in articulating concern about the long-term sustainability of the funding. Fortine Elementary Principal Laura Pluid told MTFP this week her district south of Eureka similarly opted not to participate due to uncertainty over its ability to afford significant salary increases without continued state support. However, Pluid said she wishes her district had had more time to digest the details and that, after a clarifying conversation with the Montana School Boards Association, she’s not discounting Fortine’s future participation in STARS. Neither are school leaders in Broadus.

“It’s a short time to make an important decision like that,” Jones said, referencing the May 15 deadline. “We just basically chose not to do it this year. We’re not ruling it out. We’ll look at it as the year goes on.”

This story originally appeared in the Montana Free Press, which can be found online at montanafreepress.org.