Arntzen, Leatherbarrow and Romano square off in state superintendent race: Elsie Arntzen

Republican Superintendent of Public Instruction Elsie Arntzen again faces Democrat Melissa Romano in a repeat of the 2016 superintendent election, with Libertarian candidate Kevin Leatherbarrow a contender in the 2020 race.

"We are a constitutional office, which means one of five offices that are on the statewide elected basis, and that also means I serve on the Land Board where we have our school trust lands that are predominately grazed because agriculture is our number one industry in Montana," Arntzen said. "These lands work for our public schools and our public buildings where they are 20 percent of the dollars that flow out to our public schools annually. So making a good investment in our timber, in our harvesting of our timber, harvesting in our agriculture for grazing and making sure that we make responsible decisions in sub-surface and surface mining as well as a new, most recent acquisition where we do retail."

The other part is making sure that the other dollars of the 80 percent of school funding goes through her office, she said, adding that 12 percent of that is federal funding and the rest of it comes from local and state tax dollars.

$2.3 billion of budget flows through the office of public instruction, she said.

"I believe that one of the major roles that we do on the superintendent of public instruction does is maintain that those dollars flow with fidelity, security, following the letter of the law because a lot of these dollars flow out of funding formulas that are in state statutes and federal requirements," Arntzen said. "My role is to support our local school districts - we have 400 of them in the state, 821 schools, and my job is to make sure that these schools and school districts can maintain their local control and how they spend those dollars.

"So I believe they follow through their elected boards on the maintenance of their schools, the professional development for their teachers, and of course, putting their students in their communities first under the careful care and their fiduciary responsibility with that $2.3 billion," she added.

The superintendent of public instruction office also licenses close 20,000 teachers and professionals.

She said the office has high requirements for these teachers to put the most-qualified and the best professional in front of the students.

She said her office is working through the Montana Council of Deans and state teacher preperation programs - there are 10 of them including at Montana State University-Northern - to attract Montana teachers.

"It is instrumental through our office because having our teachers become a Montana-made teacher means then that we carefully embrace how these teachers learn how to become teachers,"  Arntzen said. "Besides, the state trust lands and that $2.3 billion and then the professional licensing of those teachers one of the things under my leadership that we have done is enhancing professional development."

Teaching right now is a challenging profession not just because of COVID-19, but teachers are balancing between all kinds of things economically in the market that might pull them in a different direction, she said.

She said retaining teachers and making sure teachers have an opportunity to teach Montana is the role of the state superintendent.

"We have a virtual learning hub where teachers can anywhere across the state, in rural Montana or sitting in a very large city, may be professionally developed in a group or can use any of these credits toward re-licensing and these are free," she said. "Every five years a teacher can renew their licenses up to 60 renewal units and we make sure there is a balance of the renewal units in the office of that I hold to make sure that we have ethical teachers, that we have teachers that understand data, that we have teachers that understand how to test and we have teachers that understand mental health awareness and nutrition, and putting that whole child in front."

"One of the hopes going forward would be to embrace parents moreso than we've ever done before," she added. "I believe the future look for the office, adding on top of the priorities that I just spoke about would be parenting engagement in public education and knowing that the impact of the virus has put that math book more in charge of parents. ... That parent engagement, I think is so valuable and if parents believe in public education, if parents believe that the community schools are the best place for their children to learn then I've done my job as well because that means that local levy and local bond, and mill levy will have a greater opportunity for passage for a new gym roof, a boiler, new windows or a new methodology of teaching at that local level."

At this point, she said, funding is pretty secure in the office, but one of the issues she is working in is more flexibilities.

Teaching distanced learning in the pandemic needed flexibility, she said.

"I would say coming back, the number one challenge at this point is moving this old system of education offering more flexibility for teachers, offering more flexiblities for parent, and for school leaders and school board members," she said. "Moving forward to a new system of education that is focused the student and focused on meaningful success for their growth. ... COVID stressed our education system."

She said there is a need for grace and patience as they change this old system of education more toward personalized learning, more toward securing growth opportunities for the students.

She thinks the state did the best it could in handling COVID-19.

"I look at the experts at Office of Public Instruction and I look at the experts in Department of Public Health & Human Services, I look at the conversations that government quickly had to have - I think our system was challenged, and yes I believe there was failure, I know there was failure between myself and the Governor's Office," Arntzen said. "I had a conversation with him (Sept. 15), so I'm hopeful that those conversations will be more heartfelt and that he will embrace experts in education rather than just his own staff."

She believes there was challenges of communication, she said, adding that there never has been any two-way conversation.

A representative of Gov. Steve Bullock said in late July that it had been in contact with OPI almost daily about COVID-19 and offered Arntzen weekly conferences.

She shared with him that they can agree to disagree, but if they don't have conversations they are not putting the best foot forward for the children of Montana and the parents, the schools, she said.

"I'm hopeful that we continue to have these conversations," she said. "They shouldn't be gotcha moments, they shouldn't be political moments, they should be moments where we can work together. Doesn't matter what political party you are or if you are running for a different office, or if you are in a pandemic we should put all that aside that's what Montanans, and we put our students, our families and Montana first that's what I shared with him all along."

She said her office worked with experts to provide guidance to Montana schools.

"We've partnered with businesses, I had a partnership with the University of Montana dealing with the economics of re-opening schools," Arntzen added. "If our parents aren't back to work and schools are re-opening, what kind of burdens and challenges does that mean to the families that doesn't still have a full income at this point they had before COVID hit?"

In re-opening schools, she said, her at the OPI did the best that they could.

The pandemic isn't over, she said, what they can do going forward is sharing what great things other schools are doing, so they get ideas. 

"What I know we can do better going forward is making sure that our school leaders from our trustees, superintendents all the way down to our parents and our teachers know that there are hurdles at the OPI to help them and encourage them, and how maintain the balance for the next two years," Arntzen said. 

When asked about people receiving tax credits for donations to scholarships at public schools, Arntnzen said, "I firmly believe that the tax credit - we have over 20 of them already in the law books and I was a legislator so I understand the text law, but I firmly believe that a tax credit is a pre-public dollar," she said. "It is not a dollar that would even be embraced by the government to fund anything in schools and if we believe in a tax credit for the Humane Society or for the endowment of the arts, or for any of the other 20 tax credits that we have."

She is a public school teacher of 23 years, she said.

"If we build the best public school system even coming out of the ashes of COVID, it's still going to be remaining the gold standard for education in Montana, purely," she said. "I firmly believe that our society in Montana even more so is mobile, which means we want make sure that our parents choose the public school, but when children move in and out of the public school system they move from the reservation where we have private school or at a federal Bureau of Indian Education school - we want to embrace that child wherever they are and we want to make sure that our public system is alive and well, and focused on our children of Montana whoever they are, wherever they came from and we want to embrace in growth for their success."

She added that she is a Montanan through and through, a fourth generation Montanan.

She understands Montana's values, Montana's where the state and the people has been and where they are currently, and the future of where they are going to go, she said.

"I ran for the Legislature in 2004, and was successful for 12 years as a representative and as a senator," Arntzen said. "When you take that oath of office to protect the United States Constitution and to protect the Montana State Constitution it is an opportunity to put everything into perspective. ... Now in my role of four years and especially these last six months through this pandemic I firmly believe that as a mother and a a grandparent of children in public school that stability is needed in a system that is very stressed, but not only stability but a forward thinking for flexibilities, for offering a new view what schools can be focusing on the student."