Teacher pay primed to dominate public school funding conversation in the Legislature

After roughly nine months of negotiations, teachers and school administrators in Kalispell last month ratified a new two-year union contract that will raise salaries for first-year educators by more than $9,000. District and union leaders billed the agreement as critical to addressing financial challenges for staff in the Kalispell Public Schools, where the starting salary heading into fall 2024 was $38,385 and the median housing price is the second highest in the state.

“Many educators have faced financial strain, from taking on second jobs to delaying major life milestones,” Kalispell Education Association President Anthony Lapke said in a statement announcing the new contract, which included an average salary increase of 4.64% for teachers across all experience levels. “This contract addresses those concerns and will help Kalispell educators stay and serve the students and families in the community that we love.”

The raises will help close a lingering salary gap between the district and its seven large AA peers across the state, bumping starting teacher pay by 13% this year and an additional 10% for the 2025-26 school year. But, according to Kalispell Public Schools Superintendent Matt Jensen, the additional cost of the increases will already result in a reduction of 35 staff positions across the district’s K-12 schools. The situation could become even more tenuous if plans to boost teacher pay statewide through what’s been dubbed the STARS Act stall out in the 2025 Legislature.

“If the STARS Act legislation doesn’t come through, we’ll have further reductions at the elementary because we’re budgeting as if we have those funds,” Jensen said.

Throughout the past year and a half, state education leaders have devoted considerable time to discussing teacher pay and its contribution to Montana’s ongoing educator shortage. The Department of Labor and Industry launched a study to inform those efforts, and while a final report is pending, initial findings this summer showed starting teachers in the state make an average of $43,000 per year — more than an oft-cited estimate from the National Education Association that put Montana dead-last in the nation but still, many lawmakers and union representatives agree, cause for action.

To that end, Gov. Greg Gianforte’s preliminary budget for the coming biennium includes an additional $100 million in state funding to help local districts increase teacher compensation. The proposal builds on an incentive program called the TEACH Act, passed in 2021 and expanded in 2023, that doubled certain state payments to districts that raise starting teacher salaries. This time around, however, legislators are exploring a more across-the-board increase that would be built directly into Montana’s education funding formula. The STARS Act, short for Student and Teacher Advancement for Results and Success, debuted during the legislative interim this year, but a bill for the upcoming session has so far not been drafted.

“What’s different about this is that for districts to receive that additional funding, it is contingent upon meeting the thresholds for starting teacher pay that are identified in the bill,” said Rep. David Bedey, R-Hamilton, who chaired the Legislature’s Education Interim Budget Committee and is slated to lead its education appropriations subcommittee this winter. “Right now, one of the thresholds that must be met is that the starting teacher pay has to be at least 11 times the amount of the [Quality Educator] Payment, which is defined in law.”

The Quality Educator Payment, a fully state-funded component of the education funding formula tied to the number of state-certified teachers in a particular district, is currently set at $3,673. Under the most recent outline of the STARS Act, a district with a base salary of roughly $40,700 would qualify for twice the total Quality Educator Payment amount it’s set to receive. That starting teacher salary would also have to be 70% of the average teacher salary in the district from the prior school year, Bedey said. 

In the coming months, lawmakers and public education advocates are likely to debate the specific provisions of the STARS Act. The Montana Federation of Public Employees, which represents the bulk of public school employees across the state, has already raised questions related to certain thresholds proposed in earlier outlines. As MFPE President Amanda Curtis explained in a recent interview, a district’s average teacher salary can fluctuate based on retirements and new hires, making a percent-of-average requirement a moving target from year to year.

“This idea that [districts] are going to be able to just kind of magically continue to meet the requirements is actually setting them up to have a bunch of money and then to not have anything next year, which is going to really, really hurt students,” Curtis said, noting that the latest version of the STARS Act she’d seen included staggered percentages over the next five years culminating in the 70% requirement. “Good bill, good intentions, just probably needs a little bit more work.”

Bedey acknowledged the concerns already raised by state union leaders, adding that they aren’t the only ones taking a critical look at the ideas underpinning the STARS Act. Some fellow lawmakers believe Montana’s education funding is more than ample as is, he said, while others have suggested waiting to consider such changes until a legally mandated decennial study of the education funding formula kicks off later next year. But for Bedey and others, including Appropriations Chair Rep. Llew Jones, the broader approach proposed through the STARS Act also helps address inflationary pressures on districts and individual teachers that have contributed to widespread school budget concerns.

“With respect to waiting until after we’ve done the decennial study,” Bedey added, “we’re talking about at least two or probably three more years before we would have substantially addressed the starting teacher pay problem. I believe this is too immediate a problem to wait any longer.”

In Kalispell, teachers and administrators have taken a leap of faith that a majority of the 2025 Legislature will agree. Without the increased funding proposed through the STARS Act, Jensen said the district will likely be looking at additional staffing reductions, and the situation is compounded by Kalispell’s ongoing struggles with funding at the local level. Over the past two decades, voters have opposed increasing a property tax levy for area high schools — in turn limiting the amount of state funding the district receives for those schools. Even if some iteration of the STARS Act passes, Lapke said, starting teachers will remain particularly vulnerable to job cuts if local funding doesn’t allow the district to maximize state contributions.

“There are people that are looking to adjust the levy mechanism to try to make it harder to pass a levy,” Lapke said, referencing potential legislation that would change the requirements for approving new local taxes. “No STARS money is going to bail anybody out if that 20% of funding that comes from levies can’t actually be levied. The STARS funding will be moot.”

Gianforte’s property tax task force has recommended adding supermajority vote requirements that make it harder for districts to pass the mill levies required to budget for more spending than a baseline specified by the state’s school funding formula.

As the session begins, teacher pay won’t be the only financial consideration for public education weighing on the general fund. Just this week, the Office of Public Instruction informed lawmakers at a hearing in Helena that recent changes to state instructional standards for math — a subject more than half of Montana’s K-12 students are struggling in — may result in an estimated $28 million in added costs for districts statewide as they work to comply. Incoming state Superintendent Susie Hedalen, the Republican elected last month to replace termed-out Superintendent Elsie Arntzen, described the many financial challenges facing public schools and vowed to work with the Legislature next year to ensure their needs are adequately funded.

“I have talked to colleagues that have issues with roofs and other major repairs such as boilers,” said Hedalen, who will take the helm of OPI after serving as the school superintendent in Townsend and vice chair of the Board of Public Education. “I know that teacher pay is something that we need to address in Montana. I look forward to working with you to make sure that we get funding to those critical areas supporting teachers and increasing student outcomes.”

Alex Sakariassen is a reporter for the Montana Free Press, a nonprofit newsroom, and can be reached at asakariassen@montanafreepress.org.