GFPS increased starting teachers salaries under state incentive legislation
The STARS Act was signed into law in May 2025 aimed at boosting Montana’s K-12 education system by incentivizing districts to increase base salaries for starting teachers.
The bill increased state funding for districts that increased base salaries for starting teachers to 62 percent of the average teacher pay by 2026 and to 70 percent by 2030.
GFPS officials opted to hit the 70 percent level this school year since they didn’t expect large state funding bumps to continue.
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GFPS worked with the Great Falls Education Association, which is the local teachers’ union, to include the STARS Act when calculating starting base teacher pay during the collective bargaining process.
Heather Spurzem, GFPS’ human resources director, told the school board during their May 11 meeting that for the 2026-2027 school year, the entities agreed that the starting teacher salary would be 70 percent of the average teacher salary, or 11 times the quality educator’s payment, which equates to $42,856, whichever was higher.
Spurzem said that to determine the average salary, they computed the average for elementary teachers and multiplied it by 70 percent for $47,362 and did the same for high school teachers, which totaled $43,800.
Since the high school salary was the highest, it is being used as the new starting teacher salary, up from $46,500, for the upcoming school year.
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Based on employees in the salary schedule for the 2025-2026 school year, 106 teachers would be affected with the three percent salary increase negotiated through the collective bargaining agreement and an additional $330 increase to reach the starting STARS Act base salary threshold, Spurzem said.
The cost to GFPS is a $35,297 increase for the 2026-2027 school year.
Those numbers are estimated based on teacher salaries for the current school year and will fluctuate slightly when actual teacher salaries are calculated for the upcoming school year, Spurzem said.
Superintendent Heather Hoyer said the district got a spike in state funding for the 2025-2026 school year to meet those STARS Act salary thresholds but didn’t expect that level of funding to be sustained, so officials wanted to reach the 70 percent level within the first year.
Gordon Johnson, school board chair, asked if the district had felt an impact from STARS or if it had made teacher recruitment easier.
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Spurzem said she thought it had put GFPS on the map a little bit because it has a higher starting salary for teachers.
Luke Diekhans, GFPS’ business operations manager, told the board that it was a substantial jump to the STARS Act level salaries the first year, so the district worked with the teachers’ union so the increase wouldn’t be as significant for the upcoming school year.
The state provided quality educator funding in the 2024-2025 budget for GFPS was $2,007,059 at the elementary level and $864,734, which spiked for the 2025-2026 school year to $4,244,344 for elementary and $1,692,968 for high school.
For the upcoming budget year, which begins July 1, the state funding is $4,245,871 for elementary and $1,702,497 for high school.
Diekhans said the increase is fairly small and that’s why it was important to the district to reach 70 percent of the average teacher salary for starting teacher salaries within the first budget year.
