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Sponsor and OPI clash over language that redirects school mental-health funding in HB 669
Summary
Representative David Beattie told the House Education Committee HB 669 would align tuition calculations for students educated at psychiatric and residential treatment facilities with established tuition rules for out-of-district placements, but OPI warned that removing a contested subsection would halt a separate emergency grant program.
Representative David Beattie opened a hearing on House Bill 669, a statutory cleanup that would clarify how tuition payments should be calculated when students placed in children's psychiatric hospitals, residential treatment facilities or therapeutic group homes are educated by the local school district.
Beattie told the committee the bill mirrors the method used when students are placed outside their district for foster-care, adjudication or state protective care: the same tuition-calculation process should apply when districts educate children at qualifying facilities. "Specifically, it makes clear that the same process is to be used for calculating tuition as when the child is under the protective care of a state agency," Beattie said.
Proponents, including the Montana School Boards Association, described the bill as a cleanup to avoid conflicting interpretations between subsections of the statute (referred…
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