Legislative fiscal staff brief Senate Education Committee on school funding, demonstrate public dashboard

Legislative Fiscal Division staff told the Senate Education Committee that Montana's K‑12 funding system is complex and shaped by constitutional directives and decades of litigation. Pat McCracken, deputy research director, and Julia Patton, Legislative Fiscal Division staff, reviewed how the state's funding formula establishes minimum (base) and maximum budget limits for districts, the five state‑funded components that feed those limits and how differences in local property wealth and student counts create variation among districts.

Why it matters: The briefing outlined where state and local dollars flow in the school district general fund, identified large statewide funding components and demonstrated a publicly available interactive tool members can use to examine budget and enrollment data for individual districts. Committee members were shown examples (Ennis, Browning, Lambert and East Helena) to illustrate how property wealth, federal non‑taxable land and non‑levy revenues alter the mix of state aid and local taxation.

What staff presented: McCracken used a 'bucket'…