Park County superintendent outlines duties, warns new open‑enrollment rule will increase local tax burdens

Park County Superintendent of Schools Lisa told the Park County Board of Commissioners Monday that her office carries mandated responsibilities for district finance, transportation, records, licensing and certain personnel actions, and she warned that recent state changes to open‑enrollment rules will shift costs to local taxpayers and complicate levy votes.

The work session, held April 14, 2025, was intended to orient the three county commissioners to the county superintendent’s scope of work and to explain operational pressures facing small rural schools across the county, including Cooke City, Arrowhead, Shields Valley, Gardner, Pine Creek and Livingston Schools.

Lisa said the county superintendent position in Park County is formally half time but often requires substantially more work. She described routine duties that include certifying district finance reports to the Montana Office of Public Instruction (OPI), producing a monthly apportionment calculation for each district, maintaining records (including long‑term student records for closed schools), certifying TR forms used for student transportation, and administering teacher and trustee oaths of office. “Each district in our county… all their business officers, their clerks, send me those that I check over, go through OPI, make sure everything’s there,” she said.

Nut graf: The superintendent framed these administrative duties against the day‑to‑day realities of rural schools — small class sizes, difficulty recruiting teachers, limited local administrative…