The Montana State Legislature passed a bill in May 2025 to instate ‘Celebrate Freedom Week’ in public schools across the state for this upcoming school year. The bill that passed the law states that it is, “An act designating the last full week in September as ‘Celebrate Freedom Week’ in Montana’s Public Schools; requiring the trustees to adopt a policy to ensure the effective conduct of commemorative exercises required by law.”
The new law was passed in House Bill 591, brought by Rep. Greg Oblander from Billings. The bill says that understanding the history behind the U.S. Constitution and other key points of American history including immigration, women’s suffrage, and the American Revolution, “will help instill a sense of patriotism and civic responsibility among students.”
Freedom Week is taking place throughout Montana on Sept. 22-26 this year, which at Hellgate overlaps with homecoming week, causing the student government to dedicate a spirit week day to the new tradition. They also added a constitutional trivia activity to spirit week as a form of commemorative exercise that the bill calls for.
Student Body President Leo Westenfelder said that the school has to report what activities they did for the week to the state government. He said he appreciated the overlap with spirit week so that it was easier to dedicate activities to.
“It was nice that it overlapped because we were able to kind of mix the two and mask Freedom Week a little bit with Homecoming week,” Westenfelder said.
Spanish teacher Connie Moothart agreed that the week was made easier to incorporate this year due to the overlap. She said that her students seemed to not notice the new law as much when it was roped into an existing school tradition.
“It felt nice to be able to naturally integrate those two due to this week already being a little different,” she said.
As an IB teacher, Moothart said she already focuses on global topics and issues that Freedom Week is supposed to celebrate. She said it crossed over with themes of unity and liberty they already talked about.
As a social studies teacher, Velita Rholl felt a similar way. She said that many social studies classes weren’t that affected because many concepts Freedom Week is supposed to emphasize are already taught as a core part of the American history curriculum. She said this made the law feel slightly pointless.
“Our learning about America is built into the curriculum,” Rholl said. “Every social studies teacher covers the Constitution, we cover the Declaration. So these aren’t new concepts for us, so it felt like something that would be, as a social studies teacher, pretty easy to implement, because we’re already doing it.”
However, she had some skepticism about the integration of the week as the school’s student government advisor. Rholl’s reaction isn’t singular; many students and staff have questioned the week, some seeing it as taking too much of a controversial approach in a currently heated political climate. The Montana Legislature is overwhelmingly republican, and with many unpopular policies and actions being taken by the Trump administration, Freedom Week has felt polarizing to students who disagree with the government’s recent actions.
In response to red, white, and blue day, students shared and posted messages on social media to wear black in order to avoid celebrating homophobic and racist views of the Montana Legislature. Many students followed through with the plan, creating a new theme for spirit week in protest of the law.
Student government secretary Molly Simms said that the week felt “overly patriotic.”
Other criticisms were voiced by Rholl and Moothart, who felt the policies about the week were unclear. There wasn’t anything specific the school was told to do for the week, which left the student government to quickly come up with last minute ideas. Many students didn’t even know that the week was being integrated or what it meant because it wasn’t made clear to them, especially with the main celebration being a Homecoming spirit week theme.
“Red, white, and blue didn’t really mean anything to a lot of people. We didn’t make that clear connection to Freedom,” said Rholl. Student government aimed to make the week as apolitical as possible, going with a simple color theme and activities like trivia to fulfill the educational requirement.
The week has drawn criticism statewide as it celebrates an ideal, freedom, that many Americans see as being stripped from minorities at the moment. A week to educate about a glossed-over version of American history with a focus on liberty and freedom and not many negative historical aspects will naturally draw skepticism from teachers and students who are actively learning about American history and its many downsides.
Westenfelder said that student government attempted to approach the integration educationally to avoid “hiding the true American history.” As House Bill 591 was signed into law by Gov. Greg Gianforte, it will continue to be in effect in the near future, leaving many public school students to wonder about the future of a celebration that many feel has a clear political agenda.
