Walking through Townsend with Susie Hedalen takes twice as long as it would alone. She can tell a story about most local businesses on downtown’s main drag, and she’s stopped for conversations with parents and students at what feels like every corner.
Some call her Susie, others Mrs. Hedalen. There are the handful who call her coach because of her stint running the basketball team, and the parents who know her as their friend Suze.
Hedalen took over as superintendent of the Townsend School District in 2021. A veteran educator and administrator, she was drawn to the job because it gave her a chance to get back into a community — she had previously spent a number of years at the statewide education agency — to tackle unique challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Now, she’s one of two Republican candidates vying to become superintendent of the Office of Public Instruction. The race to run the education agency is the only statewide contest without an incumbent this year. Elsie Arntzen, who currently holds the position, will term out at the end of this year and is running for Montana’s second congressional district.
The June 4 Republican Primary will pit Hedalen, who has the support of GOP notables including Gov. Greg Gianforte, Rep. Ryan Zinke and Sen. Steve Daines, against embattled school administrator Sharyl Allen. Both held roles at OPI under Arntzen.
But Hedalen will tell you it’s not just the decades she’s spent as an educator that make her qualified for the top job. It’s her track record of building relationships and establishing trust.
“I love being able to make an impact in my local community,” Hedalen said. “The way that parents feel they can trust me, and I think that parents all across Montana should have that opportunity.”
Allen was recently placed on paid administrative leave from Harrison Public School in Madison County after being charged with a misdemeanor for obstruction of a peace officer. She pleaded not guilty. Allen’s checkered professional past includes stints at multiple school districts around the country that ended in mysterious and contentious departures.
What’s the OPI job?
The next state superintendent will be tasked with managing the roughly $1.2 billion in taxpayer dollars allocated by the Legislature plus tens of millions in federal grants and other funding sources. OPI oversees Montana’s 400 public school districts and more than 148,500 K-12 students. The agency must ensure Montana lives up to its constitutional guarantee to a free, quality education for all.
While local school boards exercise the heaviest influence over a districts’ day-to-day operations, OPI implements education policy passed by the Legislature, ensures compliance with the law and monitors student success. The state superintendent provides regular updates to key partners about the state of public education in Montana and runs teams that provide technical assistance to districts in essential areas like Indian Education for All, special education and school finance.
OPI’s head also serves as a member on the Land Board and the State Library Commission and a non-voting member on the Board of Regents and the Board of Public Education.
Under Arntzen, OPI has experienced exceptional turnover of longtime staff and hemorrhaged institutional knowledge. School administrators report feeling unsupported by the agency, and there have been documented issues with getting accurate information and access to resources from OPI. The agency has been the subject of extensive questioning from multiple legislative interim committees for an alleged failure to implement bills passed during the 2023 legislative session as well as a lawsuit from the Board of Public Education, of which Hedalen is the vice chair.
A main task of the incoming superintendent will be revitalizing the agency. Both Hedalen and Allen served as deputy superintendents under Arntzen, which they say gives them a unique vantage point on how to achieve this lofty mandate.
The Republican candidates agree that the next OPI head needs to steward better relationships with partners including teachers, administrators and school boards.
Allen emphasizes using niceties like “please and thank you” to promote a culture of respect and timely responses to districts’ inquiries.
Sharyl Allen, then the deputy superintendent at Montana’s Office of Public Instruction, speaks during an interim committee meeting in 2021.
Hedalen aspires to implement a “customer service model” at OPI, one in which the agency answers to parents and districts and supports schools in leveraging resources available to them for the benefit of students. That requires putting subject matter experts in charge of these areas at OPI, she says, and letting them build a team and do their work. Hedalen also advocates moving staff back into the OPI building currently sitting vacant in Helena as a result of an agency-wide work-from-home initiative.
Allen touts her multi-year tenure at OPI as giving her a “clear picture of the work required” and what makes her an “experienced fighter” who knows where education is heading.
Another existential issue facing the incoming superintendent will be Montana’s teacher shortage. Schools are struggling to fill about 60% of open jobs, with the problem most pronounced in rural and Native communities. Montana continues to rank as one of the lowest states nationally in starting teacher pay, despite efforts by the Legislature to incentivize districts to increase salaries for new educators.
Allen proposes a statewide salary schedule — currently, it varies by district — and reducing bureaucracy so that teachers can spend more time educating kids.
Both candidates believe that housing is a key part of the solution. Hedalen says she’d advocate for giving districts more flexibility in funding so they could use it for housing support.
Finally, there’s the question of school finance and what, if anything, the next OPI head can do to help.
Districts all over Montana are looking at massive cuts to balance their budgets. Many have said the school funding formula is broken. OPI doesn’t determine how much money a district receives from the state, but it can help schools tap into resources and finesse their financial planning. It also distributes state and federal dollars to districts.
Hedalen says her extensive experience balancing school budgets makes her well-suited for the challenge.
While at Townsend, she helped shepherd a huge renovation of the elementary- and middle-school buildings, completing the project on time and on budget. She also did not have to put a levy on voters’ ballots this year, the only tool available to districts and local school boards to increase their budgets, and Hedalen is full of anecdotes about grants she’s secured in order to make initiatives possible, like a baseball team launching next season at the request of Townsend parents.
Allen’s approach would be to advocate for the Legislature to simplify the funding formula and increase the inflationary limit on how much districts can receive from the state’s general fund each year. She says she would work to “get the federal government out of state education” by refusing federal funds and the reporting requirements that come with them. “Short-term adjustments, long-term relief,” Allen said.
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