(C) Daily Montanan
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The dark dawn of a new day: The dismantling of our public schools by design – Daily Montanan [1]

['More From Author', 'September', 'Mary Moe']

Date: 2022-09-07  

Call it kismet. I’d just finished reading about Montana superintendents’ frantic efforts to hire public schoolteachers before the school year begins when an op-ed from another newspaper appeared on my screen. In it, two Republican legislators rejoiced over the “new dawn” their recent legislation created, the “opportunity” for Montana kids to leave public schools and attend private ones.

But kismet is a positive happenstance.

As fiscal and public policy, there’s nothing good about the intertwining of these two events. Public schools can’t find teachers for one resounding reason: Our starting salaries are the nation’s lowest, $5,144 – $13,687 lower than our surrounding states’.

The Republicans’ solutions? Lowering teaching qualifications. Eliminating staff/student ratios. And encouraging kids to go to “better” private schools. Only in this new dawn could the government body constitutionally charged with adequately funding free quality public education turn away millions in tax revenues to fund private school scholarships while public schools scramble to hire the staff they need to open their doors.

Republican legislators had to devise a machine worthy of Rube Goldberg to break this new dawn. The constitution prohibits directing public funds to private schools or private school students, so they invented “School Scholarship Organizations (SSOs)” – private “non-profits” that collect the money, skim 10% for themselves, and award the rest in scholarships to students of their choosing. Slick.

To create the illusion of equality, they provided the same “opportunity” for public school donations. But encouraging donations for essential needs – competitive teaching salaries, for instance – would acknowledge the legislature isn’t meeting its constitutional obligation to fund public education adequately. So they required that public school donations be dedicated to “innovative educational programs” – extras that are nice, but not fundamental, to quality public education. Let-them-eat-cake financing. Slick.

They started small. In 2015, “donations” were limited to $150 per “donor” and the total tax credit amount for all “donors” was capped at $3 million for both public and private programs. The new cap is actually lower — $1 million – but it doubles next year and will continually expand. As for the tax credit for individual “donations,” the 2021 legislature increased it 1,333-fold: from $150 to $200,000 in dollar-for-dollar tax credits.

So who really benefits from the 2021 tweaks to the 2015 “new dawn” legislation? The handful of Montanans wealthy enough to “donate” megabucks to fund it, knowing they’ll get the entire amount deducted from their public tax obligation. One such Montanan signed off on this bill of goods. He’s not just Montana’s Governor. He’s also a governor on the Board of Governors of Montana’s biggest SSO. Slick. Slimy-slick.

There’s more. The original legislation had what legislators call “sideboards” — something to ensure some shred of public accountability for this unparalleled diversion of public funds. In 2015 Republicans decided private school test scores would be proof enough that these were good schools. But in 2021, they kicked even that flimsy sideboard away. Parents know a good school when they see one, they assured us. No need for public eyes on these private matters. Ah, how quickly we forget.

So it is that we celebrate the new dawn of a dark day, a day when parents send 94% of Montana’s kids to underfunded public schools, expecting a good teacher and a classroom that isn’t too crowded and materials that were purchased this century. The funding that could have financed those reasonable expectations has instead been diverted to schools that don’t admit all Montana’s children and don’t have to. They can be selective. That’s their appeal.

Public schools don’t just educate a public. They create one. It’s the only time in our lives that we interact in such a sustained way with people who identify, learn, interact and worship differently than we do. The understandings and connections that experience produces, so central to the bond in Montana communities and in Montana itself, are diminished by every child who isn’t there.

Choosing a private education for their child is every parent’s choice to make and ours to honor, but funding it is neither in the public interest nor within the public’s means. Teaching children to divide should be left to the math curriculum, not public policy.

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[1] Url: https://dailymontanan.com/2022/09/07/the-dark-dawn-of-a-new-day-the-dismantling-of-our-public-schools-by-design/

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