BOZEMAN — On Friday, pre-kindergarten classes at Morning Star School in Bozeman went through their normal morning routines, but they had some high-profile guests: Gov. Greg Gianforte and U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon.
McMahon plans to visit all 50 U.S. states as part of a “Returning Education to the States” tour. It comes as President Donald Trump has set a goal of closing the Department of Education – shifting some of its functions to other federal departments and passing more decisions on funding and policy to the state level.
(Watch the video to hear what McMahon and Gianforte say they're taking away from this tour.)
Montana is the 19th state McMahon’s traveled to during the tour.
“I want to see how best practices all across the country are, and to be able to take those best practices and form toolkits and deliver them back to states,” she told MTN.
Gianforte said he wanted to show McMahon some of the innovation that’s being done in schools like Morning Star, like the Bozeman Reads early literacy program.
“It's early intervention, so kids get literacy proficiency before they get to kindergarten, so the learning can begin when they get here,” he said.
“The key in this country is to get kids to be able to read, because if they can't read by third grade, they're just going to be falling behind over and over and over again,” McMahon said.
After returning to office earlier this year, Trump signed an executive order to start closing the Department of Education. He said at that time he hoped McMahon would be the last Secretary of Education.
McMahon has announced plans to cut the department’s workforce by about half. Those cuts have faced legal challenges, but the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed them to go forward for now.
“You can't just flip the switch, turn off the lights and walk out of the building,” McMahon said Friday. “There are a lot of things that have to be unwound. And absolutely, in order to fully complete this project and to have education returned to the states, Congress has to vote on that. So it's a step-by-step project.”
U.S. Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., announced earlier this month that he was introducing a “Returning Education to Our States Act” that would officially eliminate the Department of Education, distribute its programs to other departments and pass much of the federal education funding through to states in the form of block grants. Montana U.S. Sen. Tim Sheehy is cosponsoring the bill.
Gianforte told MTN the Trump administration’s moves on education are steps in the right direction. He believes Montana is ready to react if the federal government takes a smaller role in overseeing education.
“The unfortunate thing – about 10% or 11% of our public school funding currently comes from the federal government, but as one superintendent here in Montana told me, it costs him about 20% of his revenue to get that 10%,” he said. “We'd be happy with less money if it came with less red tape. That would get more dollars to the classroom, and our students would benefit.”
McMahon was in Wyoming earlier this week. She is scheduled to travel to Ohio next week.
