Look for Legislative Week in January

I trust your Christmas was fun-filled with family, friends and shared. Our holidays were spent with family and friends that included some sledding with grandkids. We now look forward to a New Year that may hold opportunities or challenges.

Legislative Week will be in the middle of January, which is something you might want to track. It will be a precursor of the subjects to be covered during our next Legislative Session in 2021. A hot subject for Legislative Week is the discussion of having session every year. There are a variety of different yearly session proposals being talked about; 30 days one year dealing with only revenue bills, 90 days the odd years, 45 days every year and 90 days every year, are all being discussed. The reason I bring this up, to change from the biennial sessions we have today, will have to be a constitutional change. That means we will all have to vote on the Montana Constitution change we want to see. If you have an idea of what you would like to see, let me or any other legislator know.

Speaking of email, my legislative email is getting flooded with copycat emails. They may come with names I should know, even relative’s names, that are bogus. To help me with sorting this out please put the name of your town in the front of the subject line. This way I can prioritize emails of constituents, saving time and frustration.

As you know, I am on the Education Interim Committee, therefore I ran into some facts I want to share. There are 496 school districts in the Montana, with a total of 147,928 students. 10,200 teachers, with a ratio of 14.5 students to 1 teacher, and a statewide budget of $1.009 billion. We have a graduation rate of over 86 percent, the good news. Bad news is the starting teacher wage in Montana averages $32,248. Some other top states I looked up are starting above $45,000. Yes, we as a committee are aware of this and continue to try and find additional dollars and solutions for better recruitment and retention of teachers across the state.

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Montana Sen Russ Tempel, R-Chester, can be emailed at Russ.Tempel@legmt.gov