School privatization schemes are being pushed in Montana

Quality public education is a Montana value and our public schools are the centers of our Montana communities. That’s why we enshrined the right to quality public education in our state’s Constitution. However, our Montana values are under attack.

A well-funded network of special interest groups, funded by fanatical billionaires, is doing everything it can to dismantle essential public services in Montana, including public education. Their central strategy is to divert public dollars to private institutions. By doing so they can not only defund our schools, but they can make a profit, too.

Montanans Organized for Education’s (MOFE) 16,000 members — including parents, students, community members and teachers — stand in opposition to school privatization (sometimes called “school choice” by proponents).

School privatization is an abuse and waste of tax dollars

When tax dollars are used to pay tuition at private schools, taxpayers are subsidizing private businesses (and, sometimes, “nonprofits”). Special interests shouldn’t be allowed to divert our tax dollars into their pet projects. Equally alarming is that for-profit schools have an outsized history of abusing tax dollars through fraud and waste. Perhaps most concerning, many private institutions that discriminate against students on the basis of disability would be sustained by public tax dollars.

Threat to rural community schools

Montana is a largely rural state, but school privatization schemes (i.e. “school choice”) would leave our rural communities in the dust and only benefit a small group of people in larger communities like Bozeman and Missoula.

Undemocratic and unaccountable

An essential difference between private education and public education is accountability. Public schools are governed by officials elected by the voters. As such, voters have the power to decide the direction of their community schools. It is the definition of local control. Conversely, private schools are not governed or overseen by their communities. Instead, school privatization advocates want us to simply close our eyes and hand over our tax dollars to unaccountable and discriminatory private institutions.

Moffie Funk is executive director of Montanans Organized for Education.