Montana’s OPI Settlement Over Indian Education for All Pays Students Nothing — It Buys Ten Years of School Spending Audits Instead, and Objections Must Be Postmarked by October 26, 2026

If you landed here looking for an “OPI settlement” payout: this one does not pay anyone. It is a class action brought only for declaratory and injunctive relief — a court-enforced promise by Montana’s Office of Public Instruction to change how it runs Indian Education for All. The court-approved notice is explicit twice over. The lawsuit “does not seek any monetary damages,” and “Nothing in the Settlement entitles the Class to any monetary payments.” The joint motion for approval says the same in legal terms: the settlement “does not create a traditional monetary fund for class members.”

There is also nothing to sign up for. The notice’s options table reads: “There is no deadline for you to participate as a Class Member. You do not need to do anything.” Because the class was certified under Montana Rule of Civil Procedure 23(b)(2) — the rule for cases seeking classwide orders rather than individual damages — there is no opt-out either. The only action a class member can take is to object, and the deadline for that is October 26, 2026.

It is also not a data-breach case and has nothing to do with the nail-polish brand of the same three letters. If you were searching for the federal OPM data breach settlement — the Office of Personnel Management hacks of 2014 and 2015, settled for $63 million with payments of about $700 and up to $10,000 — that is a different case in a different court, and nothing in the Montana agreement touches it.

The class, certified on October 25, 2023, is “all Montana K-12 public school system enrolled students, now and in the future.” The case was filed on July 22, 2021 by the parents of 18 Indigenous and non-Indigenous students in the Missoula, Billings, Helena and Great Falls districts, together with six Tribal Nations: the Fort Belknap Indian Community, the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, the Assiniboine and Sioux Tribe of Fort Peck, the Northern Cheyenne Tribe, the Little Shell Tribe of Chippewa Indians and the Crow Tribe. The notice points out that the Tribes are plaintiffs but “are not members of the class.” The Montana Board of Public Education reached a separate settlement earlier and was dismissed from the case. The parties mediated in Helena on June 23, 2025 before a retired district judge.

The core commitments in the agreement filed with the court:

• Spending audits. “OPI will require and conduct a thorough review of evidence (e.g., receipts, invoices) of all IEFA spending from at least seven schools per year for a period of ten years.” Schools are drawn at random from a pool of low scorers and schools named in complaints; after the ten years, OPI keeps reviewing up to seven low-scoring schools a year.
• Money consequences. OPI will cross-check expenditure reports and “will reduce funding for those schools that fail to meet this metric in the manner prescribed by House Bill 338.”
• Accreditation. IEFA becomes part of school accreditation reviews, with follow-up training for schools scoring in the two lowest categories.
• Tribal consultation. A yearly consultation meeting with Montana Tribes, documentation of that input, and at least three tribal member representatives on each Negotiated Rulemaking Committee, so long as three qualified individuals apply.
• Public report. An annual report each July to the Board of Public Education, every Montana Tribe and the Montana Advisory Council on Indian Education, posted online within 30 days, comparing IEFA revenue with spending and listing noncompliant schools.
• Oversight. Three years of monitoring by the plaintiffs; if they believe OPI is falling short they must notify it in writing, meet within 30 days, and can then go back to the court, which keeps jurisdiction.

In exchange, the plaintiffs release OPI from all claims “—monetary, injunctive, or otherwise—related to the subject-matter of this lawsuit, so long as OPI complies,” and the agreement is expressly not an admission of liability. Each side pays its own lawyers, apart from a separate side agreement under which OPI pays plaintiffs’ counsel $25,000 within 20 days to settle fee disputes over discovery motions.

Judge Eddy’s order of August 24, 2026 sets the calendar:

• September 24, 2026 — deadline for the notice to go out. The order directs class counsel to send it to parents through district superintendents by email, post it in a public area of every school with class members, and ask districts to put it in back-to-school parent packets.
• October 26, 2026 — objection deadline.
• November 23, 2026 — class counsel files the motion for final approval, responses to any objections, and a declaration on how notice was carried out.
• December 14, 2026, at 9:00 a.m. — final approval hearing at the Cascade County courthouse, 415 2nd Avenue N, Great Falls, MT 59401.

How to object, per the order: a student (through a parent or guardian) who wants to be heard must send a written objection by first-class mail, postage prepaid, “to Plaintiffs’ Counsel postmarked on or before the Objection Deadline,” together with any statements or papers the court should consider. Anyone who misses that step “shall be deemed to have waived any objections.” The draft notice filed in August said objectors should file with the court and serve class counsel; where the two differ, the signed order controls, and an objector who wants to be safe can do both. Objectors may appear at the hearing themselves or through a lawyer they pay. The court warns the hearing date can move without further notice.

Class counsel are the ACLU of Montana, the ACLU Foundation and the Native American Rights Fund, and class members do not pay them. The notice gives an ACLU of Montana email address for the full agreement and questions, and adds in capitals: “PLEASE DO NOT CONTACT THE COURT.”

A genuine notice arrives the way the court ordered: forwarded by your school district by email, in a back-to-school packet, or posted at your child’s school. It is headed “Notice of Proposed Class Action Settlement,” names Cause Number DV-7-2021-0000398-OC in Cascade County, and says “This is not a lawsuit or solicitation from a lawyer. You are not being sued.” It asks for nothing except, optionally, an objection.

That makes fakes easy to spot. Because the settlement pays no money, any message tied to it that asks for a bank account, a Social Security number, a fee, or a “claim” to release a payment is not from the court, the school district or class counsel. There is no settlement administrator and no claims website for this case.

The lawsuit’s complaint is the origin of the accountability terms. As the Missoulian reported, the plaintiffs alleged that only 10% of Montana’s more than 400 school districts reported IEFA spending that matched their IEFA funding, that nearly $3.5 million was unaccounted for in fiscal years 2019 and 2020, and that Bozeman used part of its $150,000 in IEFA dollars toward a librarian’s salary without justifying it. Those are allegations; OPI denies it broke the law and settled, in the notice’s words, “to avoid uncertainties and expenses associated with continuing the case.”

The case rests on a provision added to Montana’s constitution in 1972; the ACLU notes Montana “remains the only state in the nation with an explicit constitutional guarantee of Indian education.” Superintendent Susie Hedalen told the Missoulian that many of the terms are already under way. Separately from the settlement, the 2027 Legislature is expected to see a proposal from the School Funding Interim Commission to raise the minimum IEFA payment from $100 to $1,000 per school district.

As of October 7, 2026, the objection window is open and no final approval has been entered. If Judge Eddy approves the agreement after the December 14, 2026 hearing, it binds every current and future Montana public school student, and the first public test of the deal will be OPI’s July annual report.