Education Advocates Pitch Altered School Funding Formula at School Funding Interim Commission

Montana’s current school funding formula was built for a different time and a different state — or, at least, that’s what some of the state’s education advocates told members of the School Funding Interim Commission Wednesday, as they proposed an updated funding model aimed at addressing several issues the commission has pondered over the past 10 months, including equity between school districts with differing sizes and needs, funding for at-risk and special education students, and the evergreen issue of teacher pay.

The proposal came from the Coalition of Advocates for Montana’s Public Schools (CAMPS). The group comprises the Montana Quality Education Coalition (MQEC), Montana Association of School Business Officials (MASBO), Montana Rural Education Association (MREA), Montana School Boards Association (MTSBA), and School Administrators of Montana (SAM).

Those groups proposed a model where the state would fully fund districts up to a “Quality Assurance” line, rather than the state providing a base amount equivalent to around 80% of the district’s maximum budget and requiring levies to make up the difference in order to fully fund schools. It would mark an increase in the amount the state spends on education by around $200 million from the current year, CAMPS advocates told commissioners Wednesday, bringing it up to a $1.7 billion investment.

“The proposal is not just about spending money,” said Doug Reisig, the executive director of the MQEC. “It’s about spending money wisely, and that’s what every child in Montana is asking us to do.”

The CAMPS proposal is the first official suggestion the School Funding Interim Commission has seen to alter the funding formula.

Montana’s School Funding Interim Commission consists of legislators, political appointees, and representatives from the Office of Public Instruction. It’s in the throes of a once-a-decade study to understand how public K-12 schools are funded in the state. The commission is tasked with drafting recommendations for the 2027 Legislature to consider. The commission has no ability to actually pass any policy, though members could elect to recommend funding changes.

The proposal CAMPS presented to the commission had four parts, with 53% of funds being distributed for all students; 12% for unique student needs and characteristics, like at-risk student funding or special education funding; 23% for quality educators and staff; and 12% for school infrastructure.  

Lance Melton, the longtime executive director of the Montana School Boards Association, said the group of education advocates hoped the commission would take their proposal as a whole. He emphasized their goal was to maintain familiar elements of the current school funding formula, while addressing widespread concerns with it.

But the bottom line was that Montana’s schools don’t receive funding on par with other states. That’s true when it comes both to per-pupil funding and educator pay. Montana ranks in the bottom half of the country in both measures.

The CAMPS proposal suggested doing away with the decrement in the state’s current funding formula. For larger districts in the state, the amount of per-pupil funding decreases past a certain number of students. In Billings, for example, the high school district loses $400 per student for each one beyond 800, which results in the decrement costing the district $2 million per year, according to CAMPS’ pitch.

“If you remove that, then the first kid is funded the same as the last kid in your school,” said Rob Watson, the executive director of School Administrators of Montana.

Instead, CAMPS suggested funding Pre-K through fifth grade students at $5,000 per student, and sixth through twelfth graders at $6,300 per student, with no decrement. The combination of those changes would come with a price tag of around $885 million.

That proposal also differs from the current formula by lowering the high school payment to sixth graders. The current formula funds sixth graders at the elementary level, while funding seventh and eighth grade students at the high school amount.

The state legislature shot down a bill mirroring that element of the CAMPS proposal last session. But some local districts — like Kalispell Public Schools — have called for the very change the CAMPS proposal suggests. They’ve argued programmatic needs change once students hit the middle school level, requiring that higher level of funding.

The proposal also pitched targeted funding to support students with greater needs in the state’s schools, for a total of $200 million. That amount would allow a 15-fold increase to current funding for at-risk students; allow the state to double its current special education funding; triple the funding going toward the American Indian Achievement Gap; and double the current Indian Education for All payment to at least $5,000 per school district.

As for staffing, the proposal ups the quality staff and quality educator payment to $15,000 per position. For districts that meet the requirements of the STARS Act, which passed the legislature in 2025 and upped beginning teacher pay, that quality educator payment doubles to $30,000. That would raise starting teacher pay for STARS Act compliant districts to $45,000. That adjustment puts Montana on par with regional neighbors.

Those investments come with a $390 million estimated price tag. According to Shelley Turner, who runs the Montana Association of School Business Officials, the adjustments would address the issues posed to school budgets by declining enrollment — which causes per-student entitlement dollars to fall and can, therefore, impact staffing — by making a direct investment in school staff.

“By making meaningful statewide investment in compensation, we stabilize district budgets, reduce layoffs tied to minor enrollment shifts and give every district — not just the wealthiest — the ability to retain their staff,” Turner said.

The final component of the pitch consists of a basic entitlement schools will receive to help with keeping school doors open and schools running, which CAMPS estimated to cost around $215 million. Each district would receive a base entitlement, with increasing entitlement amounts based on enrollment, so that bigger districts receive an amount that matches their needs.

According to CAMPS’ proposal, the entitlements would reflect “real operational costs across Montana’s geography, including the costs of enhanced technology, instructional support and administrative leadership.”

The proposal also leaves room for districts to pursue “discretionary enhanced funding” — voter-approved levies — above the new Quality Assurance line.

As the funding formula works today, districts across the state must put funding requests before voters to grow their general fund budgets above the minimum threshold the state provides. But Montana schools have in recent years described inflation and a slew of other challenges squeezing their budgets. Education advocates argue levies have become increasingly necessary for schools to continue operating at their current levels. Even so, those levies have struggled to win approval in recent years. Passage rates statewide dropped from above 90% in the early 2000s to 56% in 2025, according to data Melton shared with the School Funding Interim Commission in February.

The hope with the CAMPS Quality Assurance pitch would be that fewer districts have to take those funding asks to voters simply to operate.

Commissioners had a long discussion with CAMPS members at the end of their pitch. They raised questions about how the proposal would impact local control and the increased funding it would require from the state.

There’s been widespread consensus among commission members that the current formula needs adjusting — though the exact levers they want to pull for changing it have differed.

Local educators at the beginning of the school year called for the state to fund schools to their maximum budgets and make better inflation adjustments. And some commission members have argued for simplifying the formula and reducing tax burdens.

In August, Reisig emailed members of the MQEC suggesting a CAMPS funding plan he wanted to endorse. The earlier proposal would have suggested a statewide sales tax to fund education, instead of continuing to fund it via property taxes. The idea wasn’t new. In the 2025 legislative session, Rep. Brad Barker, R-Red Lodge, carried a bill proposing a sales tax to fund education. It died in committee.

Sales tax pitches have long been a political nonstarter in Montana. Montanans have voted down sales tax proposals consistently, though there has been some movement on the issue as the president of Montana’s Chamber of Commerce has called for an “adult conversation” about sales tax following a property tax reform that passed the legislature in 2025. Opponents of a sales tax have argued such a measure would be a regressive tax, putting the onus on lower and middle-class taxpayers to pay more relative to their income.

CAMPS, for its part, never made the sales tax proposal. After the Montana Free Press reported on Reisig’s email, he held off on his statement of support for the plan. Some commissioners asked him about the email — which referred to members of the commission as “extremists” and claimed some did not support K-12 education — in Wednesday’s meeting.

“I’m not here to debate whether I was right or wrong at that point,” Reisig said. “I’m here to talk about funding for Montana’s K-12 students, and I do believe that the CAMPS proposal that you’ve heard about today is a realistic and effective vehicle to adequately fund education for our kids.”

[email protected]