Billings Public Schools, the largest district in Montana, used to get a flood of applications when it posted a teaching job.

Now, Superintendent Erwin Garcia said it’s getting one application for every 10 positions, roughly a reverse of the 10 apps to one single job it used to get.

He said teachers apply from other states  — “They love Montana” — but they change their minds once they realize the pay compared to the cost of housing.

“We are scratching our heads right now,” Garcia said. “What are we going to do?”

This month, Billings moved ahead on a deal that will mean a significant increase for rookie teachers, he said — from $41,803 to $46,900.

“What we want is to be the best paying district in Montana, so we want to be sure beginning teacher pay jumps up significantly,” he said.

However, data Garcia presented last week to the school board shows Billings is still behind at least a couple of nearby and competing districts in Wyoming. For example, his data shows Sheridan School District pays $54,525 to new teachers.

“We still have a long way to go compared to Wyoming salaries, especially at the base,” he said.

Montana has long been at the bottom of the heap for starting teacher pay, and Garcia told the school board that even with some increases, teachers are still behind with the rising cost of health insurance.

In 2021, the Montana Legislature created the TEACH Act to try to help increase starting teacher pay. However, a report to lawmakers earlier this year said starting pay is still low, citing a national benchmark that ranked Montana 51 in 2023. It said new teachers here earn $6,000 to $13,000 less than in neighboring states.

The act creates a payment that goes to districts, not directly to teachers, and the report from the Montana Legislature’s Office of Research and Policy Analysis said the number of teachers who qualify for the incentive increased “a bit” from 2023 to 2024, but the number of school districts receiving the money dropped.

On Friday, Garcia said more seasoned teachers in Billings also will see increases following recent negotiations, generally to the tune of 5.9%, and he said teachers who have master’s degrees and more experience are “very competitive” with Wyoming.

For example, a teacher moving from year five to year six will go from $61,671 to $65,242.

However, Garcia said if Montana doesn’t address the cost of housing, day care, and health insurance, teachers won’t be able to afford to take jobs in this state.

“Eventually, we are going to run out of teachers in the profession. And then we’re just going to have to use AI (artificial intelligence). Isn’t that sad? It’s the reality,” Garcia said.

He said he doesn’t want people to take his remarks as a threat, but he does want to be transparent about the limited alternatives. They include bringing in teachers from overseas, who sometimes struggle with the language, he said — and AI, which he said would represent “a decline of civilization.”

“If we do something like that, we’re in trouble. That’s why we need to increase teacher salaries,” Garcia said.

He said in some cities in Montana, teachers don’t have certificates, which he doesn’t want to see either.

His focus is on quality education for students and a strong workforce for the future of the state. But Montana is behind, he said; by comparison, Montana spends $315 million less on education on average on a per pupil basis than other states.

The Billings Education Association could not be reached Friday for comment.

In an earlier interview, Amanda Curtis, president of the Montana Federation of Public Employees, said year after year, elected officials “dabble around the edges at school funding” during legislative sessions.

She said Montana recently has seen 1,000 open teacher jobs, but the teachers Montana is graduating aren’t taking jobs here, and the fix doesn’t require rocket science.

“I’m tired of people pretending there’s some other complicated solution,” Curtis said. “Just f**king pay them.”

While anglers flock to streams across the Clark Fork Basin for another fishing season, hardworking staff at Montana Fish Wildlife & Parks have been grappling with a sobering question: Is it safe to eat fish anywhere in the Clark Fork River?  

Problems with fish in the Clark Fork aren’t necessarily breaking news. Previous testing by FWP found high levels of three types of dangerous contaminants: dioxins, furans, and PCBs in rainbow trout and northern pike in some stretches of the river. This discovery led to a formal advisory that the public avoid eating fish in certain river sections – from the Bitterroot confluence to where it joins the Flathead – due to human health concerns.  

But the Clark Fork is a big watershed, and questions remained about whether fish in the headwaters or downstream should also be off-limits. These unknowns prompted Montana Trout Unlimited  to partner with FWP and other stakeholders, the Clark Fork Coalition, the Montana Natural Resource Damage Program, the Missoula County Health Department and the Confederated Salish & Kootenai Tribes to pool resources to investigate the scope and potential sources of pollution.  

In 2022, MTU secured a federal EPA grant to fund water quality and fish-tissue sampling at dozens of locations, from the Clark Fork headwaters to the Idaho border. FWP staff spent the 2023 season deploying samplers in the river and harvesting fish to test for the presence of dioxins, furans and PCBs. Now the initial results are in, and the picture may be bleaker than before.  

The devices deployed last year identified elevated levels of PCBs, dioxins, and furans at the headwaters, again near Bearmouth, and downstream of Missoula.  Although we await a definitive analysis, initial results suggest that levels may approach or exceed safe limits for human consumption. It is now clear that this contamination is widespread, but more work is needed to pinpoint its specific sources, and to develop effective remediation strategies to protect human and ecological health.  

So what does this new data mean? We don’t have the complete answer yet.

Experts with FWP and Montana DEQ need to complete their quality-control analysis before making decisions about whether an expanded advisory is warranted. However, two things are for certain:  

First, Clark Fork anglers should proceed with caution. Even in very small amounts, these highly toxic contaminants are known to cause cancer, damage the immune system, and cause developmental and reproductive problems. While more needs to be done to fully understand the 2023 data, an abundance of caution would dictate avoiding fish consumption throughout the river. 

Second, the public needs more information. These contaminants are highly toxic and extremely difficult to detect. Testing is expensive, time consuming, and often leads to questions that warrant further investigation. In some areas, we currently have the resources to dig into the problem. At Smurfit-Stone – a known source of all three types of contaminants – the EPA is investigating the site and must do everything possible to quantify and mitigate Smurfit’s contribution to the problem. In other areas, we may need to collect more data to identify and remove new sources of contamination.

We’ve come too far to accept a perpetually contaminated Clark Fork fishery, and FWP’s discoveries demand a strong response. This is true not just at Smurfit but in the upper river, where hundreds of millions have already been invested in restoring a heavily damaged waterway. Through the ongoing and collective efforts of FWP, DEQ, and a broad set of community stakeholders, we are well positioned to identify and address threats to human and ecological health and work towards a cleaner and healthier Clark Fork. 

David Brooks is the Executive Director, Montana Trout Unlimited and Andrew Gorder is the legal and policy director for the Clark Fork Coalition. 

MISSOULA — Whether it’s new or old, few cars are as iconic as the Corvette, which is why members of the Hellgate Corvette Club show up to the fairgrounds every year to spell out the name with their cars.

For the 53rd year the Big Sky Corvette Meet has returned to Missoula and enthusiasts from across the state and country came to town to show off their cars.

Corvette lovers meet in Missoula

Murray Elliot, one of the event organizers, says there is a unique experience when driving any Corvette, new or old, that all owners can relate to.

“We all become one with the car and that is the fun, Elliott said.

“So we tour around, like I said this is the 53rd year so everybody knows everybody and it’s just fun to tour around.”

One of the Drivers who loves to tour his car around is Gary Kinzner who has been working on his 1957 Corvette for 50 years.

Kinzner purchased the car for $350 and fixed it new over the years, according to him nothing beats repairing an old classic.

“I look at the new cars here and they’re beautiful but most of the work is done by other people this one I can basically fix anything on it myself and that’s the fun part of owning a car,” Kinzner said.

“When I was a kid in high school when Corvettes were new those were the epitome of a cool car to have.”

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