Column - Busy week with education in interim committees

I spent much of last week in Helena hearing Interim Education Committee issues and attending a joint meeting with the Interim Budget Committee. Monday was spent engaging with the Board of Education, Office of Higher Education, Office of Public Instruction and hearing report outs. We also followed-up on the bills our committee worked on over this past year between sessions.

For the most part, members of the committee are in agreement on the proposed bills, except for proposed bill PD32. This proposed bill was to update truancy laws based on enrollment rather than a compulsory age in public schools. I believe some misinformation had disseminated as home school groups came in with concerns about mandatory 5 years of age being too young to start school. While I don’t disagree, 5 years of age had nothing to do with the bill. All language mentioning a compulsory age (7 years of age) had been previously removed. The committee split on the vote 50/50, which says to me the bill needs more work before coming back to committee. PD32 ultimately failed as a committee bill.

A bill the committee has worked very hard to get right is PD33, which is a bill clarifying that school districts should not operate outside of their home districts. This collecting of Basic Entitlements for attendance centers outside of their district. It has been allowed over and above what the law says and goes way back to the Juneau days with Office of Public Instruction. The committee agreed 100% this must be cleaned up in the law and the bill will go forward as a committee bill. The other bills moving forward from the committee to session are cleanup bills that fix language and or dates.

Tuesday, I attended a joint meeting with the Interim Budget Committee. As always, a hot topic for discussion was recruitment and retention of teachers and how to incentivize teachers to teach in Montana. We also discussed how to allow retired teachers to fill in where a teacher may not be available, without losing their retirement.

As more and more students are looking for dual credits or career opportunities, the Office of Higher Education, who was also in attendance, offered up to help going forward. Proficiency Based Learning was discussed at great length. Models from Europe were reviewed and with the popularity of these programs and the number of dual credits being taken, it seems this is a system worth pursuing and supporting. As this was an information gathering meeting, no formal decision-making took place.

A number of my signs have blown away or vanished, if you have seen any 4 x 8 signs with TEMPEL on them please call 406-265-0990.

As always, stay safe!

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Sen. Russ Tempel, R-Chester, can be emailed at Russ.Tempel@mtleg,gov