STATE FUNDING GUIDE

Montana

Montana’s HB 352 created state-funded early literacy targeted interventions — Jump Start summer, classroom-based, and home-based programs — with participating students counted in enrollment for state funding under HB 338 (2025). The honest fit note: this program targets children at kindergarten/first-grade entry, so it is a narrow match for grades 1-5 intervention purchases. Montana’s larger literacy money is its roughly $50 million, five-year federal CLSD grant, which OPI passes to districts as competitive subgrants covering birth through grade 12. Beyond these, no broad dedicated state K-5 intervention materials fund identified; districts typically use federal Title I/IDEA.

HB 352 (2023) Early Literacy Targeted Interventions, expanded by HB 338 (2025) to include numeracy

How schools fund reading intervention in Montana

The state-level programs below are the streams Montana districts most often use for evidence-based reading intervention purchases, alongside the federal streams available everywhere.

Early Literacy (and Numeracy) Targeted Interventions (HB 352/HB 338)

Funds Jump Start, classroom-based, and home-based intervention programming for eligible young students entering kindergarten or first grade, via appropriation and ANB-based enrollment funding; useful mainly at the K-entry edge of an elementary intervention rollout, not for grades 2-5 purchases.

Montana Comprehensive Literacy State Development (CLSD) subgrants (state-administered federal)

OPI’s roughly $50 million five-year CLSD award funds competitive district subgrants for evidence-based literacy resources and professional development across birth-grade 12, applied for through OPI’s E-Grants system.

Approved-list note: No statewide approved-curriculum list requirement identified; early literacy program interventions must be evidence-based under OPI and Board of Public Education implementation rules.

Official state resource →