State of Montana Newsroom
Superintendent Elsie Arntzen Still Seeking Flexibilities to Fill Quality Teacher Vacancies
HELENA – Superintendent Elsie Arntzen encourages our public schools to use emergency authorizations and Class 5 provisional licenses to fill teaching positions in Montana public schools. An emergency authorization of employment is outlined in §20-4-111, MCA, and is not a teaching license. After exhausting all traditional methods of hiring a licensed teacher a school district may utilize this type of employment for persons who have previously held a teaching license, have academic or professional qualifications, or are student teaching. Special education teachers may not have emergency authorization employment. A Class 5 teaching license is a provisional license that is good for one to three years. These licenses are given to educators who are in the process of completing the education requirements for a full license.
“Help wanted signs are in many business windows throughout our state and our Montana schools are no exception,” said Superintendent Elsie Arntzen. “Filling our schools with quality educators leads to educational excellence for our students. Many Montanans helped me in revising our educator licensing rules to allow for greater flexibilities and streamlining a new educator licensing system that meets the needs of our teachers.”
Between 2020 and 2022 the use of emergency authorizations doubled in Montana. The number of emergency authorizations per year in Montana was:
- 2018 – 43
- 2019 – 94
- 2020 – 84
- 2021 – 120
- 2022 – 173
The number of class 5 provisional licenses in Montana was higher in 2022 than in the previous two years:
- 2018 – 253
- 2019 – 238
- 2020 – 238
- 2021 – 237
- 2022 – 258
In the 2021-2022 school year there were more new licenses issued to Montana teachers than in the previous four school years. The number of new teacher licenses per school year in Montana was:
- 2017-2018 – 1642
- 2018-2019 – 1532
- 2019-2020 – 1521
- 2020-2021 – 1251
- 2021-2022 – 1646
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