(Havre) – With the Montana Office of Public Instruction accepting $57.7 million on behalf of public schools New Media Broadcasters sat down with Elsie Arntzen Montana State Superintendent of the Office of Public Instruction to talk about the money they accepted.
“Well annually Montana’s Public trust lands work for our public schools in in four different areas. In timber we harvest timber we also have agriculture and in agriculture we lease some of our state trust lands for grazing then we also have mineral development and that’s surface as well as subsurface. And then the last one is quite interesting it’s in real estate. All of those form timber, agriculture and surface and subsurface minerals flow in once a year into a public school. We as a state every two years give $2 billion of state tax dollars to public schools that supports each district and we do really well in making sure our trust lands work for schools. Less tax dollars then come out of Montanans pockets to be able to fund our schools.”
We also asked what the money will be put toward.
“Everything that happens in public schools is by formula and the legislature is what directs that mathematical formula. Maturity of the weight of the formula is by weight of the population. There are some other things in our components of school funding that talk about a base entitlement There are some dollars that flow for Indian education for all. So this formula is set in statue and every ten years the legislature looks at this formula to make sure that it fits the letter of the law, that we are funding our public school system to the best manner that we can be.”
