SAM - Creating Opportunities!

by Kirk Miller, SAM Executive Director

April has arrived and I can feel the rush you are all experiencing in our schools to complete the spring of 2020-21 educational programming for our students in the midst of the ever changing Coronavirus pandemic effect, and the planning for 2021-22!  This spring acceleration of activity and planning is normal, and because of COVID-19, has added some significant issues to contemplate in the service to your students, school and community. Thank you for the great work you do in balancing this very important completion and planning process with such perseverance.  At SAM, buried in advocacy (so important immediately because of the legislative session), this Bulletin Article has given me the opportunity to think about more than just advocacy and reflect on SAM’s core purpose to create opportunities that support you in your professional life, leading the education of our children.

Our SAM goals of ‘leadership involved in decisions that impact education’ and ‘professional learning and services’ are so very important, as is the ‘advocacy’ goal.  Elsewhere in this Bulletin I have provided an update on our ‘advocacy’ goal.  Following are some highlights of the first two listed goals. 

‘Leadership involved in decisions that impact education’ has many of our SAM members participating in the decision making that drives policy and opportunities in our schools.  SAM members are deeply involved in all of the planning efforts around mitigation of the impact of Coronavirus on the education of Montana’s children.  From ongoing efforts to determine the needs of our schools to be aligned with significant federal funding, to embracing learning recovery through acceleration and addressing social emotional needs, SAM members are at the table providing the necessary expertise to help guide decision-making.  SAM members are on the Variance to Standards Review Board, looking at requests for variance to standards from the perspective of practicing school administrators in order to help make the best decisions.  SAM has members that are key participants in Negotiated Rule Making processes that yield policy decisions. SAM members will be participating in the review of Chapter 57 and Chapter 58 administrative rules keeping the best interest of our children front and center in those discussions.  SAM participates on the Montana School Safety Advisory Council that has grown out of the work of the Montana School Emergency Management Planning Advisory Council, to help Montana develop the best safe school practices and make them readily available to all schools.  These are just a few instances of the contribution of administrators to the education profession and to our system of quality public schools in Montana.

I would also touch briefly on the work of the SAM Leaders Professional Learning Program (LPLP) members and their impact in several areas on the ‘professional learning’ SAM goal.  The SAM LPLP Transformational Learning (TL) CLN, over the past five years has been collecting and sharing successes and challenges in their work to implement personalized learning/proficiency based learning/student centered learning in their classrooms, school and even entire district.  The work of the TL CLN led to legislation to incentivize transformational learning (HB 351, 2019 legislature), and continues to be a leading think tank on successful practices in transformational learning.  The SAM LPLP Social Emotional Learning (SEL) CLN continues to work together on developing best practices for our schools around social emotional learning, ever magnified by the COVID pandemic.  I bring to your attention the continuing work of the Aspiring Superintendents (AS) CLN, the New Superintendent (NS) CLN, the New Principals (NP) CLN, the Special Education (SPED) CLN and Comprehensive Schools (CS) CLN, all of which are using collaborative practices and coach/mentors to make great progress on their work to improve student learning and meet the social emotional needs of the whole child.  We are also seeing great success with the SAM LPLP Huddle -- a monthly one-hour virtual discussion between SAM LPLP Members, Providers and SAM leadership, featuring monthly calendar items and resource update, thought-leader sessions around contemporary topics, and discussion/Q & A.  This collective effort of the LPLP is making difference for our state as we continue to work on best practices for educating our students.  My thanks to all 70 SAM Members and our 10 SAM LPLP Providers who are actively contributing to our education system through your work with the SAM LPLP!

The discussion of the SAM LPLP crosses from insuring that ‘leadership is involved in decisions that impact education in Montana’, to the ‘professional learning and member services’ SAM goals.  Certainly, the SAM LPLP is a professional learning delivery system that is personalized to meet the needs of our SAM members who participate.  Our collective effort to develop this professional learning delivery system over the past 7 years is showing results about the impact of this collaboration on administrator satisfaction and longevity – ultimately the keys to improving student learning.  You may want to consider joining this great opportunity and sign up for the SAM LPLP 2021-22! Details coming soon.

In this Bulletin, you will see other SAM professional learning and member services targeted to help you become the outstanding, complete administrator that you aspire to be in serving your students.  Check out the membership drive information and the SAM Administrators Institute 2021 opportunity!

Thank you SAM members for your great effort to be ‘leaders involved in the decision making that impacts the education of our children’ and for your focus on ‘professional learning and member services’ to assist you in being the best leader you can be.  At SAM, we are intent on creating opportunities for you!  Here’s to an outstanding April!!

2021 Legislative Session - SAM Update 

Week 14 of the 67^th legislative session gets underway on April 6 (following Easter break) and we have completed 64 days of the session with 26 days remaining.  As I described at policy bill transmittal time (3/5/21), we had early victories this session with HB 15 passing and signed into law on February 25, outlining the inflationary increase to the funding formula, giving our schools the ability to begin the plans for their 2021-22 district budgets.  Progress continues on HB 630 (ESSER II) and HB 632 (ESSER III) to determine Montana’s appropriation of Coronavirus federal funds allocated to public schools to mitigate the impact of COVID-19.

The best references to the details of the legislative session can be found on the SAM 2021 Legislative Session webpage.  SAMLN21 Legislative Update 14 SAM Status Report 4-2-21 and Podcast 14 have been prepared to give you a look at the progress of SAM Advocacy during this session.

The legislature as of 4/1/21 has produced 3367 bill drafts with 1273 introduced bills.  SAM advocacy is tracking 366 bill drafts (10.9%) with 187 (14.7%) of those bills introduced.  A review of SAM Followed Bills 4-1-21, SAM Followed Bills Status 4-1-21, and SAM Followed Bills Priority Status 4-1-21 will provide a deep dive into the status of 187 SAM tracked introduced bills.  The SAM Testimony Log 2021 Legislative Session 4-1-21 shows that SAM/MT-PEC has provided testimony 113 times on 63 different bills at this point in the session.

SAM Followed Bills Priority Status Report 4-1-21 describes the status of bills under the SAM advocacy priorities – Note the designation of SAM priorities: 1 SF School Funding (15 bills), 2 PP Privatization with Public Funds (5 bills), 3 RR Recruitment and Retention (4 bills), 4 MH Mental Health (11 bills), 5 IT Infrastructure & Technology (18 bills), 6 EP Education Policy (87 bills), 7 RT Revenue & Taxation (20 bills), 8 PL Pension Laws (8 bills), 9 SP State Policy (19 bills).  The Report provides a brief discussion on the bill status and statistics of SAM progress on our advocacy priorities as of 4/1/21 (Day 64).

SAM advocacy statistics on the 187 SAM Followed Bills …

• Support 36 bills, Oppose 24 bills and Monitor 127 bills
• 51 bills have Passed, 82 bills have Failed, 54 bills are still alive
• Big Wins – 17 of 36 Support bills have Passed (47.2%) and 16 of 24 Oppose Bills have Failed (66.7%)
• Challenges – 9 of 36 Support bills have Failed (25.0%) and 1 of 24 Oppose bills have Passed (4.2%)

A big thanks to all SAM members who are helping ensure that SAM’s Advocacy Priorities are addressed with fidelity and vigor in this legislative session!