(Helena, MT) — The Montana House of Representatives yesterday approved legislation to limit the state’s promotion of certain teachers union conferences and events.
HB 557, introduced by Rep. Jodee Etchart (R-Billings), passed 56-43, with one Republican siding with minority Democrats in opposition.
The Freedom Foundation-supported legislation would revise two state laws promoting educators’ attendance, often at taxpayer expense, at the Montana Federation of Public Employees’ (MFPE) annual convention in April and its “Educators Conference” in October.
Montana law allows public school teachers to use up to seven, district-paid “pupil-instruction-related” (PIR) days each year for purposes “devoted to improving the quality of instruction” such as “inservice training,” “professional development,” or “conducting parent conferences.” However, current law also permits teachers to use these district-paid PIR days to attend “state meetings of teacher organizations.”
In practice, educators serving as union officers or delegates use PIR days to attend the MFPE’s annual convention in April at taxpayers’ expense. However, the purpose of the MFPE convention is to attend to the governance and internal affairs of the union, not to “improve the quality of instruction” in public schools. MFPE describes its annual convention as an opportunity to “dig into officer and board elections, constitutional amendments, a proposed budget and dues, staff reports, and [union] organizing workshops.”
The 2024 annual convention also featured speeches from candidates for office, including at least former U.S. Sen. Jon Tester (D) and Shannon O’Brien, a former Democratic state legislator and the Democratic candidate for Superintendent of Public Instruction.
HB 557 would protect taxpayers by requiring that PIR days be used only for purposes directly related to teachers’ official duties and repealing the provision allowing PIR days to be used to attend union meetings.
Additionally, state law presently requires school boards to “close the schools of the district for the annual instructional and professional development meetings of teachers’ organizations” and provides that teachers may attend such meetings “without loss of salary.” In practice, districts interpret this as requiring them to close for two days each October to allow their teachers to attend the MFPE Educators Conference on district-paid time.
While MFPE markets its Educators Conference as a professional development opportunity, the Freedom Foundation has documented that much of the conference programming is oriented toward political activism, radical woke ideology, and union marketing.
Conducted just weeks before the general election, sessions with titles like “Candidate forum,” “Current political issues,” and “The Montana Legislature and 2024 Elections” featured Democratic candidates for state offices and sought to enlist educators into advancing the union’s political and policy goals.
Other sessions involved the promotion of gender ideology, historical revisionism, environmental activism, DEI, and other polarizing subjects with little relevance to improving teachers’ skill in the classroom.
HB 557 would introduce some accountability by removing the state mandate that schools close for the MFPE conference, restoring districts’ control over their calendars and allowing them to determine whether to facilitate or promote their teachers’ attendance at the union conference.
“There’s simply no justification for the state to compel taxpayers to pay for teachers to attend the convention of a private membership organization, especially one so heavily dedicated to partisan politics,” said Maxford Nelsen, the Freedom Foundation’s director of research and government affairs.
“While there’s nothing wrong with school districts providing paid time for teachers to pursue professional development,” Nelsen continued, “it’s inappropriate for the state to impose a preference for the union conference on local schools and educators, especially since there are many other sources of professional development that don’t involve MFPE’s extremely controversial, far-left ideological content, partisan political advocacy, and self-promotion.”
In addition to the Freedom Foundation, HB 557 is supported by the Montana Family Foundation and Foundation for Government Accountability Action. It now moves to the Montana Senate for further consideration.
Freedom Foundation testimony in support of HB 557 before the House State Administration Committee:
