(C) Daily Montanan This story was originally published by Daily Montanan and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Education directs OPI to ‘get process moving’ on charter schools • Daily Montanan [1] ['Nicole Girten', 'More From Author', '- March'] Date: 2024-03-25 Montana’s education board voted unanimously to send a letter to the Office of Public Instruction directing the department to take the necessary steps to get charter schools off the ground in Montana. During a special meeting Monday, Board of Public Education chairperson Tim Tharp said the department has been delaying the process for charter schools to open, and stood alone in its rationale for how the process should be conducted. “I find this to be a highly distasteful situation where one constitutional body is forced to request that another constitutional body carry out duties as prescribed,” Tharp said. The board’s decision echoes what Republican legislators said in their own letter to Montana Superintendent of Public Instruction Elsie Arntzen earlier this month, in which they rebuked her for not fulfilling her constitutional duties on charter schools, Indian Education for All, early literacy and data modernization. However, Arntzen pushed back, saying she was following the law, and asked the board to put in place a policy to give consistency between how charter and public schools are opened, saying she felt both should be treated the same. Earlier this year, the board unanimously approved 19 charter schools, of which 18 are slated to be operational on July 1. Tharp said the legislature passed the bill giving the board the authority to implement it– letting the board approve or reject charter applications based on criteria in the bill. The state’s board, though, worries that the department, led by Arntzen, has done little work to help the schools open smoothly as the school year winds down. They expressed concerns that further delay will hamper the success of the newly minted schools. Arntzen however, maintains that Montana law is clear about the process to open new public schools, and that process is outlined in statute, which, depending on the grade level, requires approval from the local school board, the county superintendent and the county commissioners, a position which lawmakers and the board have rejected. The board’s letter said the approved contracts have requirements for the charter schools to open smoothly, and none of them require additional approval from county commissioners or OPI. Meanwhile, Arntzen has said because charter and public schools should be treated the same, so both must go through identical processes to open. “Nothing in the law that your staff have cited from a different and inapplicable part of the code, or the terms of those contracts requires school districts to obtain supplemental approval of their charter schools from the county commissioners or your office,” the letter read. In the board meeting, Tharp said OPI is “expecting a separate and additional process” for opening charter schools, which he says creates a scenario where county commissioners could vote against the opening of public charter schools, “scuttling the entire process.” “If the legislature had wanted a process to give the counties veto power over the local school board and the board of public education in opening these charter schools, they would have done so,” Tharp said. Gov. Greg Gianforte’s Education Policy Advisor Dylan Klapmeier said the lieutenant governor, who is an attorney, reviewed the board’s position and agrees with the board’s legal interpretation. He said the board’s position is also supported by legal opinions from the legislature, school associations, as well as the expressed legislative intent of those that worked on the bill. “The board has authorized these public charter schools as the law requires and it’s time for school codes to be assigned to these public charters and to begin incorporating funding for them for fiscal year 2025,” Klapmeier said. Bill sponsor Rep. Fred Anderson, R-Great Falls, said he worked closely legislative lawyers during the lawmaking process to make sure the bill was constitutional. “We had no intention of having a third party involved in the opening of the charter schools,” Anderson said. Anderson said he’s spoken to schools that had their contracts approved, and are frustrated by this additional process. “I know Superintendent Arntzen has advocated school choice since having been elected and so seeing this now as a detour, or a roadblock, is disappointing,” Anderson said. Arntzen said, as she did in a letter to the board last week, she believes charter and public schools should be treated the same in code. “I believe public charters are public schools,” she said. In her letter, she said the bill did not change existing legal requirements for opening a school in the state. She said the board can make a policy to establish a charter school opening process, which she said during the meeting would make policies consistent and easier to understand for schools and OPI staff. In a statement following the meeting, Arntzen said a path forward was offered to the board by way of them making a new policy, and said she will “follow the law as written.” “Public Charter Schools are indeed public schools and therefore subject to all laws within Title 20,” she said. “Nothing in HB 549 changes or waives the existing, statutory school opening process.” Arntzen, who is termed out as superintendent, is running in the eastern congressional Republican primary. [END] --- [1] Url: https://dailymontanan.com/2024/03/25/education-directs-opi-to-get-process-moving-on-charter-schools/ Published and (C) by Daily Montanan Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/montanan/