John,
We've always known our current state superintendent is not looking out for our public schools, but this might be a new level of carelessness.
Montana's public schools are out $800,000 because Elsie Arntzen chose to go along with Secretary Betsy DeVos' discriminatory guidance to funnel a larger share of coronavirus relief aid from public schools to private schools.
Now that the federal rule has been struck down nationwide, Elsie doesn't have a plan for how to make it up to our public schools.
In fact, at the last education interim committee meeting of the year, she sent her fifth deputy in her place to answer questions about the missing aid, because she felt her time would be better spent attending a partisan rally than do her job.
Mr. Johnson, who spoke on behalf of the superintendent at the committee meeting, told members: "I don't have a good answer for you when it comes to how to make funds whole as a result of this."
Elsie has known this would be a possibility since May and she failed to prepare. Now our students are going to suffer the consequences.
She's already absent - let's make it official and vote her out on November 3.
|
|
