How to revamp the educational system

Montana's Legislature may have to tear down the state's old framework for funding schools and adopt new thinking such as incentives for the best teachers or allotments on a per-classroom basis.

These were among ideas on the table in Helena recently, when lawmakers heard presentations designed to inform their court-mandated decisions in revamping the system.

The Burton K. Wheeler Center, a nonpartisan public policy corporation based at Montana State University, invited economists, attorneys and education advocates to share their expertise during a daylong forum on school funding.

The focus was a Nov. 9, 2004, Montana Supreme Court mandate for the Legislature to come up with a new funding plan.

"I can't stress enough that this is just the first inning," Atlanta-based school litigation attorney John Munich told the legislators.

"You have a chance to not have another decade of litigation."

As they try to craft a final solution to lawsuits that education groups began filing against the state in 1985 - with interim steps taken to provide for equitable funding - Munich urged them to learn a lesson from New Jersey, home of the longest-running educational adequacy case in the nation. That action began in 1973.

Since then, 45 states' funding systems have been challenged in court.

South Carolina just finished 110 days of litigation. A Kansas ruling is being appealed now, but the state must take action by April. Missouri, Nebraska, New York, North Dakota and South Dakota are all in some stage of legal proceedings.

Research and results in these cases provide a frame of reference for Montana lawmakers during this legislative session.

"We're engaged in a very healthy process," Jim Molloy told the group. "It's not an easy one, but it's a healthy one."

Molloy is lead counsel in Columbia Falls School District, et al. v. State - the adequacy suit that brought on November's Supreme Court ruling - and was involved in the 1985 equity case.

"Equity and adequacy are quite different concepts," Board of Public Education Chairman and Havre Superintendent Kirk Miller said.

The equity process Montana underwent after 1985 forced poor and rich schools to spend roughly the same amount on each student. Although it dropped everyone to the lowest level, Molloy said, it brought on a search for common solutions.

Today's adequacy case claims the state shirks its duty to provide enough money for schools, meaning students get an inadequate education regardless of how the system is set up. Moreover, it says local, state and national policy decisions are not tied to funding available to carry them out.

To set it straight, Molloy told the legislators, they have to look beyond the statehouse.

"You are not educators," he said, "and how can you hope to (define) a standard to meet those mandates without involving educators in this?

"Unless we take the opportunity to do it right, I fear our only recourse will be to go back (to litigation) to do it right.