Extra money won't go far

Local educators unsure how much they can spend

As the Montana Quality Education Coalition heads back to court for a report card on how well the Legislature carried out its school-funding assignment, local educators are scratching their heads over how much they now can spend on school needs.

And how to finish the admittedly partial fix.

"We all heard the governor say he wants to hit the road and see Montana, now that the education issue is in the rear view mirror," Columbia Falls Superintendent Michael Nicosia said. "But I don't think it's in the rear-view mirror."

Directors of the coalition which sued the state over K-12 school funding - a lawsuit in which Columbia Falls School District Six was the lead plaintiff - tried to make that clear on Thursday.

That's when they voted to ask District Judge Jeffrey Sherlock for a hearing sometime in the next four months.

At the hearing, they want to outline their concerns for lawmakers to consider in the 2007 session.

Their vote follows a round of state action beginning with a $70 million funding infusion by the Legislature this spring.

Another $71.5 million came from December's special session, but nearly half of that - $34.5 million - is one-time money for next year. The remaining $37 million is permanent money the state will provide to schools every year.

The one-time money is parceled out to specific areas: Some goes only for an Indian Education for All curriculum and some only for weatherization and deferred maintenance projects that can be spread over three years. And $2 million will be given statewide this winter only, based on each school's enrollment, to cover energy costs.

Most of the ongoing money, too, is earmarked - to intervene for at-risk students, to close the achievement gap between Indian and other students and to provide Indian Education for All.

But each district also will get a general fund allocation - calculated from the size of its teaching staff - of $2,000 per teacher. Although the money is intended to recruit and retain teachers, districts can use it for anything to improve the quality of education.

Nicosia is not optimistic about how far the $345,000 will stretch in his elementary and high schools.

"The only money I have for ongoing expenses is $2,000 per professional educator," Nicosia said. "That has to go not only to teachers, but to classified personnel, administration and any additional funds needed for supplies, textbooks" and other areas.

He said a 2.5 percent raise built into the teachers' pay scale means the per-teacher allocation "won't even be enough to cover the teachers' raise."

Nicosia calculated the special session provided a 2.7 percent increase over his current fiscal year's budget.

West Valley Elementary Superintendent Todd Fiske is cautious about referring to the per-teacher allocation.

"The teachers are going to think they get the $2,000 bonus," he said. "It's so much more difficult than that. You have to be able to sustain that year after year."

By law, he said, a bonus can't be given one year, then rescinded later when funds evaporate.

Fiske admitted West Valley enjoys a unique funding situation due largely to the boom in housing developments within school district boundaries northwest of Kalispell.

"It's a little different in my district because we are growing" by about 20 to 25 students a year, Fiske said. "The budget works differently when you have kids walking in the door."

But forecasting school needs is tough for the same reasons.

He said the school expects to need a bigger building in another five years if growth continues, so the district needs to set aside money now to hire an architect who can develop a building concept in three years.

"Our predictors are the Section 36 sale and development being proposed. The Owens property has 185 lots north of Glacier High School" just to the east of West Valley School, Fiske said as he tallied up the district's current growth points.

"The Stillwater Estates piece … three years ago we had only four kids in there, now we have 53 kids.

"We are not going to be able to [support] this growth without us expanding," he said.

"But the bottom could fall out of the growth, too."

With that unpredictability, he said, Fiske is unsure how to advise his school board on allocating the $72,000 in ongoing money that now will come into the general fund.

School District 5, where a new high school and revamped middle school will open in fall 2007, has an entirely different set of concerns.

Among AA school districts, Kalispell's elementary district will receive the least funding from the special session, both in one-time money and ongoing money.

Its one-time elementary allocation is $525,000 and the ongoing allocation is $443,000.

By comparison, Billings is at the top of the heap with $2.1 million and $2.2 million, respectively.

But Kalispell also will receive the lowest "quality educator payment" - the $2,000 per teacher amount - on a per-student basis. Kalispell will get $135 per student; Billings will get $152.

In the high school district, Kalispell's one-time allotment is $558,000 and the ongoing funding is $415,600; Billings is $1.2 million and $1.04 million, respectively.

As a portion of Kalispell's overall general fund budgets, the special session provided about eight percent of the elementary budget and a little over seven percent of the high school's budget.

When it comes to using the quality educator payment, District 5 Superintendent Darlene Schottle said if salary and benefit changes are considered, they would have to stretch across the board, not just to certified teachers.

Textbooks, information technology and materials for the two high schools also could be vying for at least a portion of this money, she said.

But "this is just the one-year bridge" in state funding, Schottle noted.

"I believe the state will have this as a major area of discussion at the next Legislature. I don't think they see this as the final fix," she said. She expects more research into components of a funding formula, and then another try at carving out that formula.

"There's still a lot of concern on behalf of the legislators in our state that this did not meet the criteria of what each district needs to have," she said.

"And if there are not concerted efforts to look at this funding fix as a whole, there remains the possibility that the lawsuit could continue."

Although she thinks legislators are "ready, willing and able to look at it," she cautioned that lawmakers must take a new tack in deciding how to pay for each component of education to come up with a viable way to pay for schools.

"We can't simply take, 'This is how much we have available, so how do we spread it out?'"

Nicosia sees it much the same way, but appears less hopeful.

"The difficult part is the people in our communities have been told that the problem's been solved," he said. "But I don't know what $70 million means on a statewide basis, so how does anybody else?"

If this were to be the Legislature's final answer, he said many local districts would be forced to go back to the voters for ongoing money beyond the new infusion from the state.

"That's what this was supposed to solve," he said of the court mandate.

"There's no difference from what they did in the last regular session and this special session from what they've always done," Nicosia said. "They decided beforehand how much money they had to spend, and they parceled it out. They haven't changed their approach."

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com