A looming school funding lawsuit that could result in a court-ordered boost to Montana’s spending on K-12 education has so far drawn support from some — but not all — of the state’s public education advocates.
The legal challenge to the state’s current education funding system, organized by Helena-based Upper Seven Law, is still being drafted but will likely be filed by the end of the year, Upper Seven Executive Director Rylee Sommers-Flanagan told Montana Free Press on Thursday.
Missoula County Public Schools trustees voted to sign onto the effort Tuesday, providing the first public indication that a new round of high-stakes litigation is brewing over the state’s K-12 funding system, the Montana Free Press reports. It has been nearly 20 years since a series of major court rulings in Columbia Falls v. State set legal boundaries for Montana’s current education funding model.
Separately, the Republican-controlled state Legislature has convened a once-a-decade study commission tasked with assessing Montana’s public education system, which has been buffeted by the COVID-19 pandemic and concerns over keeping teacher pay in line with cost of living. The study commission, which includes a bipartisan array of lawmakers and other appointees, is in the early stages of formulating recommendations that could be enacted by the 2027 Legislature.
The foundation for both the lawsuit and commission is the state Constitution’s requirement that the Legislature, which controls the state’s purse strings, provide “a basic system of free quality public elementary and secondary schools” funded “in an equitable manner.”
Precisely what counts as “quality” and “equitable” funding — and how those concepts should translate to specific provisions of the state’s complex school funding formula — has been the subject of decades of policy wrangling in and out of court. In 2002, for example, a coalition of education advocates, including the Columbia Falls elementary district sued the state, alleging that it had failed to adequately fund education, resulting in a 2005 Montana Supreme Court ruling that ordered the Legislature to spell out a clearer definition of quality. Further litigation in 2008, however, produced a district court ruling that allowed the Legislature to continue making incremental changes to the state’s current funding model.
Sommers-Flanagan said this week that conversations with education experts, children, parents and school administrators have persuaded her and her colleagues that it’s time to put the issue before the courts again.
“The information we’ve gathered in that process has made it very clear that there’s a constitutional violation occurring,” Sommers-Flannagan said.
“I have yet to talk to a school district that does not have a concern,” she added.
While Missoula is the first district to sign onto the planned lawsuit publicly, Sommers-Flannagan said Upper Seven has been talking with a variety of other districts, including schools in Alberton, Bozeman, Billings and Helena.
She also said the staff time necessary for the litigation will be paid for by grants and donations to Upper Seven, which operates as a nonprofit.
The Missoula school board’s decision to sign onto the pending lawsuit as a plaintiff was first reported by the Missoulian. During the Sept. 23 meeting where the board voted to join the suit, Upper Seven attorney Andres Halladay said he hoped Missoula’s choice would encourage other districts to follow along.
“I think there’s an opportunity to stand up on behalf of public education in Montana,” said Missoula Superintendent Micah Hill. “It’s hard for me to see a downside. I don’t know that you can go anywhere but up.”
The lawmaker who chairs the school funding commission, Hamilton Republican Rep. Dave Bedey, told MTFP in a Thursday interview that he worries adding a lawsuit to the mix will politicize the education funding discussion, preventing him from building a bipartisan consensus around what a high-functioning public education system would look like — and, by extension, how it can be funded.
“I would like to establish some common ground first, before we jump into the things that will polarize the conversation,” Bedey said.
Bedey, a centrist Republican who has led legislative efforts to draft the state’s education budget in recent years, also said he thinks school funding critics aren’t acknowledging how much progress lawmakers have made.
“To claim that our school funding mechanism is hopelessly broken is, I think, an enormous overstatement,” Bedey said.
Other education policymakers expressed ambivalence over the potential lawsuit this week.
Montana School Boards Association director Lance Melton, for example, said in an interview that his group is currently focused on trying to collaborate with the funding commission, rather than asking the courts to step in.
Melton noted that the Legislature has boosted the state’s contributions to K-12 education by hundreds of millions of dollars this year, including via this year’s STARS Act, which allocated $100 million to increasing early-career teacher pay. He also pointed to an analysis that found funding for many components of the state’s school funding formula have nearly kept up with inflation since 2020.
“We’ve been really encouraged by the progress that the Legislature has made and we are continuing that work before the school funding interim commission,” Melton said.
The state’s primary teachers’ union, the Montana Federation of Public Employees, also indicated it is currently focused on lobbying the commission.
“We will work with anyone to pursue any avenue to help the Legislature keep our constitutional promise to help every single student fulfill their academic potential,” MFPE president Amanda Curtis said in a statement. “MFPE members aren’t strangers to school funding lawsuits, but we’re rolling up our sleeves to help the School Funding Interim Commission determine what level of funding will meet that promise.”
Some education advocates have worried about the composition of the school funding commission, which includes some charter school advocates and hardline Republicans.
In an August email previously obtained by Montana Free Press, for example, Montana Quality Education Coalition Executive Director Doug Reisig wrote that the commission “is certainly not filled with people who support K-12 education.”
Upper Seven has repeatedly brought lawsuits challenging policies adopted by Montana’s Republican-controlled state government in recent years, sometimes drawing criticism from elected Republicans.
Sommers-Flanagan, who founded the firm after serving as an attorney in the administration of former Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock, said the intent of the planned school funding lawsuit is to help the state fulfill its constitutional obligations by adding additional information to the discussion, rather than to produce a distraction. She’d also be “thrilled,” she said, if the funding commission and Legislature take action that’s substantial enough to nullify the legal case.
“Lawsuits can sometimes clarify for people the stakes of their work,” she said.
This story was originally published by Montana Free Press at montanafreepress.org.
