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Montana must strive to attract top teachers

by Linda Reksten, Dave Bedey and Llew Jones
| February 2, 2025 12:00 AM

Some good news out of the Montana Legislature this session is that legislators seem to agree on two things: The need to fund a high-quality education for Montana students and a need to lower property taxes. Fortunately, a package of school funding-related bills can help us achieve both.  

Montana is falling behind our neighbors in how much we pay our teachers, especially first-year teachers. That means a highly-trained teacher who might prefer to live here in Montana chooses to teach in Wyoming or North Dakota instead because those states pay more competitive starting salaries. Because we can’t compete for top talent, Montana students pay the price.  

The STARS (Student and Teacher Advancement for Results and Success) Act of HB 252 incentivizes higher starting teacher salaries to attract and retain those highly-qualified teachers. But that’s not all: it expands career and technical education opportunities, dual-credit programs, and proficiency-based learning, too, so that our taxpayer dollars are going directly to educating students for success both today and in the future.  

With increases in school funding comes the inevitable question, “But who is going to pay for it?” We cannot raise property taxes on Montana residents. Fortunately, there are common-sense solutions to our school funding challenges that don’t pile an even greater burden on homeowners. The STARS Act itself helps correct the inflation lag in our school funding formula by making up the difference using state general fund money. This is a permanent solution for Montana schools to compete for the highest-quality teachers without adding a dime to your property taxes or making dramatic changes to the current funding formula. 

Another solution would preserve the 95 mills levy as a stable funding source for schools while redirecting any excess money collected directly to property tax relief for homeowners. Together, these solutions reward schools that pursue better outcomes for their students while addressing the challenges inflation has posed to school funding and teacher pay, all while reducing property taxes instead of raising them. 

These are the kinds of win-win solutions we support. Working together, we can give Montanans what they’re asking for: a high-quality education for their children without placing a greater burden on homeowners.  

Reps. Linda Reksten, R-Polson, Dave Bedey, R-Hamilton and Llew Jones, R-Conrad.