Hill campaigns at Pachyderm meeting

Montana Rep. Ed Hill, R-Havre, who is running as an incumbent against Democrat Paul Tuss in the upcoming election, spoke at a meeting of North Central Pachyderms last Friday, a meeting which featured a lengthy discussion of the future of public education and conspiracy theories.

Ed Hill began the meeting with brief remarks about his candidacy, saying he aims to streamline regulation for local business, support law enforcement and return Montana's current budget surplus to taxpayers.

Hill said he supported efforts to call a special session to have the Legislature decide what to do with the budget surplus, as well as efforts earlier this year to hold a special session regarding voter integrity.

The voter integrity issue has been fueled by the false conspiracy theory that the 2020 election was stolen from former President Donald Trump.

He also talked in more detail about his position on the surplus, which he thinks should go back to the taxpayers, a subject he's heard will be one of the first things the Legislature tackles in the next session.

He said he learned a lot about government in his first legislative session, particularly about the ways veterans in the state are treated, a subject he said can be very sad.

While Hill commented on a range of topics, the bulk of the discussion at the meeting was about education, which was also one of the primary subjects of his remarks.

He said he supported the implementation of the Accelerate Montana Program, which helps Montana businesses increase their success throughout all stages of expansion, and brought $1.5 million into the Montana University System.

He also said he is on the Legislature's Interim Education Committee and touted his seven-year history on the Havre Public Schools Board of Trustees.

He said he's proud of the area's education system and particularly of Montana State University-Northern, which he said has earned the support of the Legislature.

Group discusses public education

The vast majority of the meeting was a question-and-answer session with Hill where members of the group discussed public education at length and were highly critical of it at both the collegiate and K-12 level.

Attendees criticized the public school system for not working harder to combat drugs and discipline children, which one member said is contributing to the state's crime rate.

There was also a lot of criticism of online learning platforms and mask policies, both of which have largely become optional since the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic ended.

Hill said one good thing that did come out of the pandemic is that parents were more aware of what their children were being taught and exposed to, which he said he thinks has contributed to the "exodus" from public schools.

He said a lot of parents may not be certified to teach but are qualified to teach their own children and homeschooling allows them to instill their values, morals and ethics more directly.

He said he has a constituent and neighbor who took his children out of the public schools because they were being bullied and the school system did nothing about it, a criticism that was echoed by others at the meeting.

Hill said he had a hard time in school when he was young, and he's been talking to people in government about possible changes that may make things easier, like more flexible time scales, for students to reach proficiency in subjects they struggle with.

He said he spoke from his personal experience when he says he feels that what students learn in a given year needs to build on the previous year more effectively.

Overall, he said, there are a lot of people at the state level who are unsatisfied with the results that the public school system is producing and he thinks the curriculum needs to be more streamlined.

Hill County Commissioner Diane McLean, a former teacher and county superintendent of schools, was also at the meeting and offered her thoughts on education.

McLean is a Republican running for reelection against Democrat and Hill County Commission Executive Assistant Sheri Williams and independent Les Odegard.

She said people should temper their expectations of the outcomes for public schooling in part because they are obligated to teach all students, including those who are not being taken care of by their parents, or who are foster children.

"When your business is making blueberry pie, you would go out and try to secure the best blueberries for your pies, but our education system does not get that choice, we do not get to secure the best students, we have to take all of the students," she said.

She said teachers are expected to do a lot more for students than they were back when she was a teacher, especially for the amount that they are paid.

McLean cited Ben Carson, retired neurosurgeon and U.S Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Donald Trump, and former U.S. Rep. Allen West, R-Fla., as examples of what a game-changer public education can be for people, but agreed that curriculum needed to be "paired down" to only what is truly necessary.

She said there is too much hand-holding done in modern schooling and students need to be taught about what is expected of them.

She also said school books need to be examined in greater detail to figure out their political biases.

The idea that public school curriculum needs to be reduced to only the essentials was echoed by Havre City Council President Andrew Brekke, who claimed that the political left wants to focus education on how students feel about themselves and each other while he wants school to focus on what is best and most productive for society and the student.

"Reading, writing and arithmetic, forget all the other crap, teach a skill that, as an employer, I can hire, that's what I want," Brekke said.

He said curriculum at the K-12 level needs to be separated from what is taught at the collegiate level because of how the two type of education are paid for.

He also expressed belief in a conspiracy theory that public school is part of a plan to destroy religion and the family.

"Not to talk about conspiracy theories, but people have been planning this for many, many years," he said. "Part of it is the destruction of families, the destruction of God, all of these things."

Another conspiracy theory discussed at the meeting was the idea that children in public schools are being "sexually groomed" a common homophobic and transphobic sterotype about the presence of LGBT educators and learning material featuring the presence of LGBT people.

Hill did not push back on any of these ideas and specifically said efforts to groom children in education are wrong and anyone who doesn't like it can leave the state.

Hill talks campaign and policy positions

While education was the most prominent subject of discussion at the meeting, Hill and the group did talk about other subjects including some misconceptions about his history as a legislator.

Hill said he encountered the rumor that he voted in favor of making Montana a "Right to Work" state, which he did not.

Right to Work legislation varies state to state but generally prohibits unionized workplaces requiring dues from non-union members who work there.

When this legislation was brought forward at the last session, Hill said, he voted against it.

He also said there is an idea out there that he voted to take away money from Northern, which he also said is untrue.

He said there was money for Northern in House Bill 2, but it was one item among a massive funding bill that he voted against.

There was also some brief talk about his opponent whom one member criticized for receiving too many donations from out of state.

Hill said he doesn't know how much of Tuss' contributions come from out of state, but he knows that his own campaign money comes largely from Havre.