This week the Great Falls School Board voted 4-3 to accept the election results for the May 2, 2023 school board election. Typically accepting the canvass- which means accepting the results of the election- is a perfunctory measure. The Election Administrator provides the election results and the total cost of the election, and the School Board simply accepts the results. However, the days when Cascade County’s election results can be relied on are long past.
Before the vote, Superintendent Tom Moore and Brian Patrick provided an overview of the canvass, including highlighting several significant errors. Many of these errors were first brought to light by the Election Protection Committee. Moore discovered further errors during the private meeting in which Sandra Merchant provided the canvass results. Moore noted that voters in Districts 19C and 21B were seemingly not mailed their absentee ballots whatsoever. Merchant seemingly ignored over 400 registered absentee voters in these districts. The District was also provided different voting totals. The Election Administrator first provided results, but the County Attorney’s Office then provided different results, with a difference of 75 votes. Although Patrick asked the County Attorney’s office to explain this difference, the District did not receive a response before Monday night’s School Board meeting.
The District also provided a list of 17 questions to Merchant which were vital to the discussion of the Canvass. Merchant failed to respond to a number of those questions. Moore intimated that after asking the County Attorney’s office about why Merchant had not provided these answers, the County Attorney stated that they could not MAKE Merchant do anything but could only offer advice and recommendations.
Another tremendous concern is the cost of the election itself. Despite requesting a mail election in their original agreement, Merchant refused to honor this request. Rather, Merchant opted for a more complicated and likely more expensive hybrid election, which included a poll election. Poll elections require renting a space and paying additional costs of staffing that election. Merchant originally provided the District an estimated cost of around $41,000. It appears this estimate was based off a previous mail election, which would not accurately reflect the costs of a poll election. The District requested the bill for the May 2, 2023 election, but as of Monday, Merchant had not provided this.
Accepting the results of the canvass also obligates the School District to pay the Election Administrator for the cost of the election- a cost that is still unknown. Trustees asked questions about the obligations of the District should Merchant’s bill exceed the original estimate. Trustee Bill Bronson indicated that he would refuse to pay any excess costs and would be willing to take the matter to court if necessary.
The Trustees were presented with various options as to how to proceed. If the Trustees opted not to accept the canvass, they could pursue a separate legal route which would allow the Board to appoint 3 members for a one-year term, and then put all candidates on the ballot again during the next election cycle. Not accepting the canvas would also mean the Board would not have to agree to the yet-undisclosed total cost.
After lengthy discussion, including public commentary and an examination of legal recourse, a motion was made to accept the results of the canvass. The votes were as follows:
Kim Skornogoski- No
Marlee Sunchild- No
Amie Thompson- No
Bill Bronson- Yes
Gordon Johnson- Yes
Mark Finnicum- Yes
Paige Turoski- Yes
Skornogoski, Sunchild, and Thompson all indicated they were uncomfortable accepting results when they recognized the process was flawed. In his comments, Bronson explained that his understanding of the law influenced his vote. As the results showed a decisive victory for the winners, he believes case precedent would show that the flaws in the election were not enough to overturn the results. Turoski acknowledged the incompetence shown by Merchant in her running of the election, but still opted to accept the results as the two losing candidates did not voice any objections.
Now voters must await Merchant’s final bill. When will it be provided? No one seems quite sure. Merchant, who failed to even attend a recent court hearing regarding her work, did not attend the School Board meeting either. Merchant has refused to speak to the media (save a far-right radio station, which she has graced with her presence). She fails to respond to emails and telephone calls, and apparently even the County Attorney’s office has seemingly given up on getting her to perform her job duties. If Merchant will bill the School District for the excessive costs of the poll election remains to be seen. Regardless, those additional costs will come straight out of our pockets. It is our tax money that pays for all of this, including her $70,000 annual salary. When Merchant chooses to run the least economically feasible type of election, our community suffers the costs- both literal, ethical, and legal.
Usually you don’t see national dark money groups showing up in local school elections in Montana, but it has now happened here in the Great Falls School Election. Early this week voters in Great Falls received a text message from Free to Learn Action, a national right-wing organization.
The Freedom to Learn Action text is poorly researched and violates Montana campaign law. Specifically, there is no disclaimer identifying who paid for the piece as required in Montana statutes. It also identifies the “party registration” of each of the candidates for school board. The problem is that voters do not register by party in Montana, and the school board election is a non-partisan race. Put simply, there is no way Freedom to Learn Action knows the party affiliation of the candidates. Finally, the piece identifies candidate Tony Rosalles as a Democrat. While Montana doesn’t register by party, Tony Rosalles is the head of the local Libertarian Party. It is pretty unlikely that he considers himself a Democrat.
ProPublica reports that Freedom to Learn is a national right-wing group which says that its mission is to “advocate for classrooms independent of political influence” (https://freetolearn.org/mission). The organization is headed up by Allison Liegh Marre, who has a long history of right-wing activism. She worked on Republican Scott Walker’s 2014 run for Governor in Wisconsin. She worked for the National Republican Congressional Committee and was the national press secretary for the National Republican Senatorial Committee. She also worked for the Air Force during the Trump Administration. (https://projects.propublica.org/trump-town/staffers/allison-leigh-marre)
You might be wondering why a national right-wing group would be showing up in a Great Falls Montana school board election. Aside from the fact that the entire right-wing power structure hates public schools. Well. . . probably because Montana’s US Senate race is going to be the biggest race in the US Senate in 2024. National groups want to establish a “Montana track record” to attract more money for their coffers. We note with interest that US Senator Steve Daines is now the Chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, where Marre used to be the National Press Secretary. It’s going to be a long election season.
The E-City Beat opinion piece entitled“Mob Rule Dominates Great Falls Public Education Meeting” (1/4/2023) grabbed my attention. Its author Jeni Dodd identified herself as a “creative, multi-faceted, multi-talented, knowledge junkie. Liberty, integrity, truth, and critical thinking are among my most important precepts.”
Having attended that meeting, I found her article title completely confounding. So, I read the first sentence.
“Amid a chorus of boos and shout-downs, there were a few brave souls that dare (sic) to express opinions unpopular to the summoned mob.”
Wow! We must have attended different meetings. This “mob” consisted of an engaged, but largely respectful group of parents, current and former teachers, administrators, and legislators. Ms. Dodd followed that introductory grenade by stating that the above sentence was “my overall impression of the recent meeting … .”
Was she dreaming?
Ms. Dodd continued by “blowing” the line of communication that led to almost 200 people attending the meeting:
“… Moore originated the communication by sending an email to Great Falls Rising, who then forwarded it to the Cascade County Democrat Central Committee, who sent it via Mail Chimp to their mailing list.”
I sincerely doubt that only Great Falls Rising forwarded the communication to the Cascade County Democrat Central Committee. There were at least two other sources sharing communication about the meeting, each of which had CCDCC members as part of their email lists. The CCDCC could have gotten the information from any number of sources.
Ms. Dodd blustered on, “Moore approached me after the event, and I was surprised when he ask (sic) me if he had answered my question.”
The question wasn’t hers; Rep. Krebs demanded that Sup. Moore defend how he had come to hear about the meeting. Ms. Dodd later followed up by pointing her hypothetical finger at Sup. Moore as she rudely asserted, “You didn’t answer his question!!!!”
“I also let him know I had seen the message he sent to his so-called ‘partners’ and asked, ‘Who were these partners?’”
“He answered, ‘I sent an email to Great Falls Chamber, Yes to Education and the education advocacy group Great Falls Rising.’”
“By the way, his words, not mine, categorizing Great Falls Rising as an ‘education advocacy group.’ I would beg to differ.”
“I don’t know about you, but when someone won’t give a straight yes or no answer and instead, deflects questions and redirects to another topic, it makes me uneasy and suspicious. I subsequently told Moore that this wasn’t the first time I’d seen him evade and avoid answering questions.”
Really? I think Sup. Moore directly answered Ms. Dodd’s question. Maybe she should ask the real question: why does the MT OPI not want the educators it is meant to support attending meetings it organizes?
Here’s my impression of the Anrtzen’s “faux” public education meeting.
Sup. Arntzen organized the forum to attract a specific minority of Montana residents in each of the towns she visited. She did this by selectively sending meeting notices through certain sources to get the audience she wanted to interact with – Republican legislators so that they could use the meetings as a way to spread disinformation and raise popular support for for passing anti-public education legislation. (She held a fifth “forum” on January 2nd at the Capitol Building attended by her selected audience and, I would guess to her dismay, Occupy Montana Leg attendees there to express their opinions during the opening session of the Legislature. They watched as the meeting that she had tried to orchestrate in Great Falls actually played out in Helena (as it had in the first three meetings she produced in other Montana cities.) They said wildly conspiratal things: that public schools are “confusing” students by moving “far, far Left”, and that school administrator positions are a waste of taxpayer money.
Sup. Arntzen’s selection of the first four Montana cities for these “productions” (Kalispell, Stevensville, Billings, and Great Falls) is illustrative of Sup. Arntzen’s true purposes. She did not list Bozeman, Missoula, Helena, or Butte. What’s the difference? The four cities that got selectively-sent notices were Republican and the four which did not were Democrat.
The “chorus of booss” referenced by Ms. Dodd was directed at Sen. Emrich’s (R) suggestion that the inadequacy of funding for education could be addressed by reducing the funding directed toward school administrators. The “shout-downs” were an automatic shock response by attendees to the suggestion that too much funding was going to administrators and that reducing administrator funding could begin to adequately address the education shortfall. It was also a result of the obvious, insidious attempt to pit teachers against administrators by Sen. Emrich and other Arntzen “production” partners including Rep. Kerns. But Sup. Arntzen et al totally misjudged their audience. At one point, she asked the attendees who support public schools to raise their hands. With the exception of these legislators, nearly the entire room did raise their hands. Sup. Arntzen had an agenda she wanted to communicate, but she was forced to read the room. Regrettably for her, educators and parents were allowed to voice their very real concerns about education in Cascade and surrounding counties.
Ms. Dodd concluded her fallacy-filled confabulation with this:
“A picture emerged from my attendance at this forum and it isn’t a pretty one— the picture that far too many of the summoned bunch that attended don’t want parents and taxpayers to have a voice with OPI and legislators in a public forum— at least not a voice that they can’t control.”
Ms. Dodd, in the above quote, got it backwards. In fact, the Great Falls “bunch” was a voice that they (Sup. Arntzen et al) could NOT control.
Below is a summary of the suggestions coming from many of the meeting’s “uncontrollable” attendees:
We must pay our educators a salary commensurate with the responsibility they bear for our most valuable resource, our children.
We must bookend traditional K-12 education with
(a) public preschools taught by certified teachers in all school systems and
(b) direct connections to post-secondary training/education leading to jobs.
3. We must address the mental health/substance-abuse issues that threaten our children.
4. We must fully fund the woefully underfunded federal special education mandate
Readers of this commentary, please look carefully if you see/ any legislators referencing parent/public comment as a basis for an education bill. If the reference differs from the four suggestions listed above, they may have originated from a deceptively choreographed series of meetings like Sup. Arntzen’s that produced a predetermined result supporting the game plan of the MT Republican party to destroy Montana’s vitally important public education system.
Finally, Ms. Dodd failed in her self-proclaimed devotion to liberty, integrity, truth, and critical thinking. In fact, her opinion piece is filled with untruth, emotionally-based conclusions, and attempts to manipulate its readers.
Integrity? Sadly, Ms. Dodd, on that criteria you earned an “F”!
On January 2, 2023, the 68th legislative session made its debut swearing in the newest batch of Montana legislators. This also marked the first time that one party formed a supermajority since Montana’s constitution was adopted 50 years ago. Speaking of which, this Republican supermajority is champing at the bit to introduce a slew of amendments to the constitution. They’ve proposed 54 such amendments already. Some of the topics they want to legislate on are: the way elections are handled, the way judges are selected, redistricting rules (read: gerrymandering) amendments defining gender, banning abortions, and enshrining school choice and a parental bill of rights.Their plans are clear. They want Big Government to control Montanan’s personal lives and public institutions. Confusingly, Sen Steve Fitzpatrick has proposed a constitutional amendment on proposing constitutional amendments. If Republicans have their way, Montana’s constitution will be unrecognizable before the session is through.
Concerned about Republican’s extremist agenda, a group of activists from Great Falls organized an event – Occupy MT Leg. We were joined by concerned citizens from around the state. Why occupy space on the first day of the session? To let these legislators know that we will hold them accountable for everything they do during this session. Our sizeable group from Great Falls, Helena, Belgrade, Conrad, and more, first gathered in the rotunda to protest Superintendent of Public School’s Elsie Artnzen, who had brought in a slate of far-right speakers (an abuse of the office) to mount yet another unfounded attack on our public school teachers and administrators. Artnzen’s “event” was small, disorganized, and met with Boo’s from protestors in the crowd.
We then moved to the Old Supreme Court Chamber, where the public reception was to be held for the newly-sworn lawmakers. Cakes were there, ready to be served, doubtless alongside much back-slapping and self-congratulations. We had aimed to speak with our legislators and make sure they know what we expect of them, but it turns out that they didn’t want to face the public. Not to be deterred, we gathered around the balcony of the rotunda, displayed our signs, and filled the space. We are here, and we will not be ignored.
Finally, following the swearing-in, we marched around the capitol building. The group was comprised of people from different generations, different parts of Montana, with different advocacy issues. But we experienced a solidarity that we believe we share with a large portion of Montanans. Far-right extremism is not representative of most of us, and this “super majority” does not represent us. They are not some aristocracy, and we are not some peasantry. We can and will raise our voice when they eat their cake and throw us the crumbs. We’ll be keeping a close eye on their votes, and the bills they sponsor. With this supermajority, they feel emboldened to show their true colors. And we are committed to rejecting fascist ideology wherever we see it.
Last night, Montana’s Superintendent of Public Instruction, Elsie Arntzen, hosted a forum at Heritage Hall at Great Falls College MSU and it was standing room only. Several Great Falls legislators, school board members, and school district superintendents attended the event.
Why such impressive attendance?
In the days before the event, Great Falls Rising had sent multiple emails with a forwarded message from Great Falls Public Schools Superintendent Tom Moore. In the message, Moore stated “none of the superintendents have received personal invitations to attend” the four events that were scheduled by the Office of Public Instruction (OPI) and he urged people to attend the meeting. To be honest, there has been a lot of broken trust between the OPI and Montana’s public schools. A year ago, the superintendent of every AA school in Montana signed a letter of no confidence in the OPI due to several failings during Superintendent Arntzen’s tenure. A motivation to rally around our schools might have packed the room.
What was the event’s purpose?
Ironically for a meeting about “bridging” communication, communication of the meeting’s purpose was poor. After the first 45 minutes of the forum, one audience member took the mic and asked the question on many of our minds. “What is the purpose of this meeting?”
Elsie Arntzen took back the mic and gifted us with an incoherent, rambling statement. I wrote, “WTF” in my notebook because her answer made zero sense.
Excuse me, what?
The questioning audience member tried to ask her question again, but Elsie either didn’t want to provide the real reason and/or was unable to articulate a response. Great Falls Public Schools Superintendent Tom Moore stepped in and briefly explained that he understood the purpose of the meeting was to have a conversation with the newly elected legislators in our area. To engage our parents, school leaders, and legislators in discussing issues of mutual interest before the upcoming legislative session. It was nice of Moore to try to hypothesize why Arntzen decided to host these forums.
Okay, Superintendent Moore’s answer made some sense – but – an astute audience member asked a great follow-up question. Why were these meetings only scheduled in the “more red” cities of Kalispell, Great Falls, Billings and Stevensville? Why weren’t forums scheduled in Helena, Bozeman, Butte or Missoula? On brand, Superintendent Arntzen’s response was a confusing paragraph of buzzwords. While her answer made little sense, she implied meetings would be held in the bluer cities in the future.
Nothing political to see here people!
If Superintendent Arntzen was expecting a venue to spew anti-public school and “parental choice” gibberish, she sure didn’t get it. When newly elected Daniel Emrich (SD-11) stood up and said that if you want to raise teachers’ salaries, you need to cut administrators’ – the crowd booed! A teacher spoke up and said that we need to keep public dollars in public schools and loud applause broke out.
What did other Republican legislators have to say?
Besides Emrich, a couple other Republican legislators in the room spoke and had tense interactions with GFPS Superintendent Moore. Jeremy Trebas (SD-13) pressed Moore about accountability for student achievement. Moore responded with a graph visually demonstrating all of the extra demands we have put on the shoulders of our educators over the past decades. Scot Kerns (HD-23) complained that communication between the schools and the public needed to be a two-way street. Moore responded by saying there were procedures in place to request information, fill out a form to release salary information. Kerns loudly interjected that he had filled out the form. Moore responded that other legislators have made an effort to go to the schools and work with administrators and teachers directly. It seemed as if he was calling out Kerns’ accusations of non-transparency as being in bad faith.
Tough subjects were raised. I’m glad our legislators were there to hear them.
People brought up the fact that taxpayers are tapped out for increased property taxes. Multiple audience members mentioned that our students needed more mental health and prevention services, not less. That subject was raised in a direct response to Arntzen’s proposed elimination of mandated school counselor ratios.
Based on the mood in the room, I felt hopeful. Because the word had gotten out, there was a strong, pro-public school sentiment in the room. We didn’t have the attacks on our schools seen at the Kalispell and Stevensville forums. People were speaking out and paying attention. If we want improved student achievement, we need to invest in our children. We can’t do that by asking more and more of individual taxpayers. The state needs to allocate monies properly to fund our PUBLIC schools. An audience member asked, “Who is going to want to teach in five years with these attacks on our public schools?” You heard us, Great Falls legislators. SUPPORT OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
It’s called a “Super Majority.” And Republicans are just two legislative seats away from having it. It means that, in addition to the crappy bills they pass in the legislature, they will be able to change the foundation of our government that protects citizen rights. . . the Montana Constitution. And they just can’t wait to do it.
First, they will be able to propose constitutional amendments by referring them to the ballot, if they garner the support of two-thirds of legislators. That means that 100 politicians in Helena can put amendments to our constitution on the ballot. Currently, amendments can only be proposed by gathering enough citizen signatures. It’s hard to do, meaning that lots of amendments are proposed, but few actually make it to the ballot.
Second, a super majority can call for an unlimited constitutional convention by referring a convention call to the ballot. If approved, a convention can propose changes to virtually anything in the constitution by a vote of the delegates. At a time when large swaths of the Republican Party support the January 6th insurrection and believe the hocus pocus dished out by the likes of Donald Trump, it is scary to think about what they would do to our constitution.
We encourage everyone to look at our constitution. It is an amazing document. https://leg.mt.gov/bills/mca_toc/index.htm We thought it would be good to list a few of the rights we stand to lose if the Republicans achieve their super majority in this election.
Section 4. Individual dignity. The dignity of the human being is inviolable. No person shall be denied the equal protection of the laws. Neither the state nor any person, firm, corporation, or institution shall discriminate against any person in the exercise of his civil or political rights on account of race, color, sex, culture, social origin or condition, or political or religious ideas.
Section 8. Right of participation. The public has the right to expect governmental agencies to afford such reasonable opportunity for citizen participation in the operation of the agencies prior to the final decision as may be provided by law.
Section 9. Right to know. No person shall be deprived of the right to examine documents or to observe the deliberations of all public bodies or agencies of state government and its subdivisions, except in cases in which the demand of individual privacy clearly exceeds the merits of public disclosure.
Section 10. Right of privacy. The right of individual privacy is essential to the well-being of a free society and shall not be infringed without the showing of a compelling state interest.
Article IX (1) The state and each person shall maintain and improve a clean and healthful environment in Montana for present and future generations.
Article X, (2) The state recognizes the distinct and unique cultural heritage of the American Indians and is committed in its educational goals to the preservation of their cultural integrity.
Of course these are just words on paper (or pixels on a screen). The constitution comes alive over time and primarily through actions in the court system. Here in Montana and nationally conservative Republicans believe they have lost many of their goals in the courts. One result is that they have made it a priority to replace judges who don’t share their views. This is probably the reason so many evangelicals supported Trump. . .and he delivered for them by appointing three Conservative Supreme Court justices. Here in Montana, Supreme Court candidate Jim Brown is the epitome of a judge with a Republican agenda.
Changing our constitution would be the Holy Grail for the far right in Montana. And they are very close to being able to do it in the Montana Legislature. The stakes in this election are very high. If you care about protecting our constitution, vote for Democrats.
