The Great Falls Public Schools district is moving forward on its plan to open the new CORE School this year as officials at the state level disagree over the process.

The crux of the issue is that the Montana Board of Education and Office of Public Instruction have taken different interpretations on the process to open a new school.

The Montana Board of Education has been overseeing the process, as they say is prescribed a bill passed by the Legislature in 2023.

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Recently, OPI’s Superintendent Elsie Arntzen said that school districts would have to follow a separate and different process in state law to open a public school that requires review and approval by the county superintendent of schools and county commission.

Legislators and the MBE have chastised Arntzen for her interpretation of the law and slowing the implementation of several new education laws, in particular the opening of new public charter schools.

On March 25, the MBE held a special meeting to review a letter to Arntzen that they approved and sent to her after the meeting.

During the meeting, MBE Board Chair Tim Tharp said there are “numerous roadblocks and obstacles to legislation being fully implemented as intended, all seemingly being caused by Office of Public Instruction’s interpretation of these new laws.”

As he said that, Arntzen could be seen in the Zoom video shaking her head.

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Tharp said that Rep. Fred Anderson, sponsor of the bill to establish the public charter schools, had described in detail in his legislation the process the board should follow to review, approve and open those new charter schools.

The board had approved 19 charters in January, 18 of which are scheduled to begin operating July 1, he said.

He said the legislature, governor’s office and MBE had been consistent in the process.

The only dissenting opinion was coming from OPI expected a separate process and the “difficulty this creates is not only in time and effort for these schools, but creates a scenario where county commissioners could vote against the opening of these public charters and therefore scuttling this entire process,” Tharp said.

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If legislators wanted to give counties veto power over the school board and MBE, they would have done so, Tharp said.

He said OPI has created a “highly distasteful situation” where one constitutional body has to formally request another constitutional body to carry out their duties as prescribed.

“It is my hope and prayer that approval of this formal letter from the Montana Board of Education to the sate superintendent of public instruction will get this process moving so that these innovative programs designed to benefit the students of Montana may open on time as expected on July 1.”

Dylan Klapmeier, Gov. Greg Gianforte’s education policy advisor, said, “the lieutenant governor has reviewed the [MBE’s] position in this matter and agrees with the legal position of the board. The board’s position is further supported by legal opinions from the Legislature and the school board’s association, as well as the expressed legislative intent of the bill author.”

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He said the board had authorized the public charter schools as prescribed by law and “the governor wants to see them open without delay.”

Renee Rasmussen, MBE member, said that at first blush she agreed with Arntzen, but upon further review, said that she believes the new public charter schools were not to be opened under OPI and were their own entity and the process for opening them was detailed in another section of law.

Anderson, the bill’s author, told the board that he spent time with legal counsel in developing the legislation and had no intention of having OPI or county officials in opening the public charter schools.

He said that it was notable that GFPS has opened two new schools in recent years that had no involvement from the county commissioners.

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Arntzen was the state superintendent when both of those schools opened.

Anderson said he was disappointed that Arntzen had advocated for school choice since being elected and was now creating a roadblock to opening the charter schools.

One person spoke during public comment in agreement of OPI’s interpretation of opening the new public charters.

Anderson told The Electric this week, “I don’t know where Superintendent Arntzen came up with this. All of a sudden, she pulled this out of the air some place. It was a surprise to everyone that all of a sudden this extra requirement to put county commission in charge of opening came out of nowhere.”

Rep. David Bedey, R-Hamilton and chair of the Education Interim Budget Committee, said legislative committees had sought legal advice and agreed with BPE in the substantive interpretation of the law.

“We simply do not believe that the legal counsel for the Office of Public Instruction has this right,” Bedey told the board.

He said they’d communicated their disagreement with Arntzen but hadn’t been successful and said he hoped MBE would have better luck.

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Arntzen, said she didn’t want to challenge the public charter school requests, but wanted to follow the law.

She said she had asked the board to develop a policy that would give consistency to the public charters because she didn’t believe the law waived the requirements for opening a traditional public school that differ from the public charters.

The board voted unanimously to send the letter to Arntzen, in which they wrote, “the board declares the public charter schools open.”

They wrote that the board has satisfied all of the legal requirements to open the new charters as they have followed the process and have fully executed contracts.

“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 board wrote and directed Arntzen to take specific action to help the schools complete their openings.

During their March 25 meeting, GFPS Board Member Bill Bronson said he appreciated that MBE had taken a strong stand with OPI.

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He said there was no reason for OPI to engage in the public charter approval process and “it was clear what structure was to be in place to review and approve these schools.”

Bronson said the authority was vested in MBE and the districts with contracts pursued those in good faith.

“I do not want to see it derailed,” he said of GFPS’ CORE School, for which the district opened the enrollment lottery this week.

GFPS Superintendent Tom Moore told The Electric that lawyers for the Montana School Board Association and the Montana Quality Education Coalition are representing the districts that had been approved for new public charter schools.

He said GFPS supported BPE and its letter to OPI since “it seems overly burdensome to go through another set of beau acratic steps.”

Moore said they understand that OPI has an interest around the rules and regulations of how funding flows to the new charter schools and it stands to reason they’d have to file reports with OPI, but “to go through a whole set of steps for additional permission to open a school, that makes no sense, especially asking local officials to approve something the state has already approved.”

He said that they’re moving forward with CORE School as planned, but monitoring to see the response from OPI.