Mariah Thomas here with your Daily Roundup… and I’ve got an update about school funding.

Let me refresh your memory: the state is in the throes of a once-a-decade look at school funding, as the School Funding Interim Commission works on the decennial study examining the state’s funding formula. Keep in mind — the commission’s work doesn’t have any legislative power. Rather, it’s meant to inform education policy in the state.

The decennial study process includes a new step approved by the legislature this year, requiring an innovation and excellence in education working group to convene, study and create a recommendation plan for the commission, focused on finding education policies domestically and internationally that produced the best outcomes.

I covered a June meeting of the commission where members voted not to include representation from education advocacy organizations in the working group. At that meeting, the commission planned to maintain representation from a parent group. But in August, commission members voted to nix inclusion of a parent group representative as well, opting instead to proactively reach out to all these groups for input during the process.

That means the working group and commission membership will consist of the same 20 people. It includes lawmakers, members of the public and representation from the governor’s office, superintendent of public instruction, board of public education and the Board of Regents, which rules over Montana’s university system.

All the commission’s meetings are public, and interested individuals can offer public comment at the meetings, the dates of which are published online.

At that same August meeting, commissioners sat through a presentation from a consulting group they’ve brought on to help fill the working group’s responsibilities. That group is the National Center on Education and the Economy, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit that studies “the highest-performing and fast-improving education systems globally and in the U.S.”

Now, the next step in the process: the National Center on Education and the Economy is going on tour, and its first stop is in Kalispell on Sept. 17. The tour, dubbed a “road show,” is meant to gather information from local communities for the commission to consider, according to commission chair, state Rep. David Bedey, R-Hamilton.

Representatives from that organization will be in the Arts & Technology building, Room AT 139, at Flathead Valley Community College for two sessions Sept. 17. The first will go from 4 to 5:30 p.m., and another will be held from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Members of the public are invited.

“The focus will be on how we might change education policy in Montana to improve student outcomes,” Bedey wrote in an email to the Beacon. “Considering what we wish to achieve in our public schools is a precondition to deciding how we might best fund that effort.”

I’ll be attending one of the Kalispell road show stops to listen in. If you care about education policy and funding in Montana, I hope to see you there.

And keep your eyes peeled for more about school funding later this week. I attended a town hall at the end of August hosted by the Montana Federation of Public Employees, which represents certified and classified school staff members, and those present had a lot of interesting insights as to how the state’s education funding formula is working in practice.

Stay tuned — and make sure to check out our stories from the past 24 hours in the rest of today’s Daily Roundup.