Trego's Mountain Ear

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Choices for Parents- but not for Schools or Taxpayers?

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Sam

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One of the ‘Things Our Government Has Been Up To’ is House Bill HB203, which passed into law. It’s marketed as a bill about school choice, although Montana was already a state that allowed for out of district enrollments.

One of the things it does, is that it makes it harder for schools to say no to out of district enrollment. “Perhaps the most compelling and direct impact of HB203 is that Montana public school districts will no longer have absolute discretion to deny applications for out-of-district attendance.” There are very limited circumstances in which the law will allow districts to reject out of district enrollment.

More choice for parents? Not here. Our local schools have already been accepting out of district enrollments when they’ve been able to do so and meet the needs of the students. Less choice for school boards? Definitely. And for taxpayers…?

The taxpayers of the district accepting students aren’t on the hook for funding those students (and really weren’t before, since the state distributes school funding based on enrollment anyway), but the donating school district can expect to contribute over a thousand dollars of tuition per leaving student.

Will this impact district taxes and levies? Probably, especially in smaller districts where budgets run tight.

Did it increase our choices for where to send our kids to school? No. Not here. Not for us. Did it turn our kids into dollar signs for other school districts? They already were, do to the state’s method of redistributing funds. But it’s increased the number that goes with the dollar sign.

What did our local senator and representative vote? Yea.

One response to “Choices for Parents- but not for Schools or Taxpayers?”

  1. forestdi56 Avatar
    forestdi56

    I see the dead end with regard to cost to donating school districts and eventual costs to district taxpayers. However, if a school wants to keep students the school and school board might want to work a wee harder at convincing the parents their child needs to stay in their school district. A child being moved is generally an indication the parents aren’t happy about something. The unhappiness supercedes inconvenience to move which is usually an indication of serious unhappiness. Regardless of whether the unhappiness is based on sound reasons or not, the school board should be savvy enough to rumors, history and community needs to work on a campaign to change perception. Sour grapes, or the perception of such, generally pushes people away. The real or perceived notion of misconduct tends to do that, too. Also requiring public campaigning to resolve. From where I sit, too many school officials seem to think children should automatically appear in their own district school; teacher, board and district personnel behavior aren’t the problem. It’s always some citizens’ fault which may also be true. But if a district wants to keep irs children then the there is some work to be done by the entire community to do that. Moving a child elsewhere seems easier to do than the local community work. It will backfire in the future, of course, but by then bringing the kid “home” might not be possible. Just some thoughts.

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