Leading up to the COVID pandemic, Montana public schools were falling farther behind when it came to starting teacher pay. But a new program, passed by the 2025 Legislature, has already boosted starting teacher pay and kept districts from struggling with open positions, according to school leaders. Erwin Garcia, the superintendent of Billings Public Schools, the largest public school district in the state, said that his district was seeing as many as 100 teachers per year leaving. Lance Melton, the chief executive officer of the Montana School Boards Association, gave an example of how the new program works. If Montana’s school-aged demographics had simply kept pace, Montana would have nearly 217,000 students enrolled in public schools.