Idaho ranks last in education funding. This group will ask you to change that. Here’s how
Standing in front of a group of students in Boise, Luke Mayville, the co-founder of Reclaim Idaho, shared a statistic.
“You may have all heard that in Idaho, we are dead last in funding per student for education,” he told the group in July. “We’re not only 50th, we’re actually 51st if you include D.C.”
He went on: “But it’s bigger than that.”
The state isn’t paying teachers competitively, causing them to leave the profession or go work in other states, he said. There’s not enough funding for programs such as career technical education, arts and music. And there are significant discrepancies between districts across the state based on funding from property taxes, he said.
That’s why Reclaim Idaho — the organization that took on the successful Medicaid expansion drive in 2018 — is campaigning this year to get the Quality Education Act on Idaho’s ballot in 2022. If passed, leaders expect the initiative to bring in more than $300 million for schools per year across the state.
The organization is ramping up its signature gathering after the Idaho Supreme Court ruled late last month that a law passed by the Republican-dominated Legislature making it harder for citizen-led initiatives to make it on the ballot was unconstitutional. The ruling came after Reclaim Idaho sued in May.
“What we could achieve with this initiative is really a historic investment,” Mayville said, “much bigger than the level of funding increase that we’ve seen in a generation in Idaho.”
What exactly is the Quality Education Act?
The initiative proposes a new way to fund schools in Idaho: a tax increase on the wealthy and corporations.
The Quality Education Act, as it’s called, would restore the corporate tax rate to 8% from 6.5%, and raise taxes on individuals making more than $250,000 a year and couples making more than $500,000 a year. That increase, of about 4.425%, would apply only to money earned beyond those amounts.
Most people wouldn’t be affected by the new taxes, according to Reclaim Idaho.
“We think of it as a very modest, fair, balanced change to the tax code that can bring in a whole lot of funding for education,” Mayville said.
It’s more popular than what is happening now, he said.
“The state is, you know, woefully underfunding education, and then kicking the burden to property taxes, forcing local communities to raise more and more of these levies,” he said. “People don’t really like property taxes.”
If the initiative made it onto the ballot and passed, funds would be distributed across the state on a per-student basis, Mayville said. School districts would spend those funds at their own discretion, under the oversight of the State Board of Education, he said.
Funds could go toward more competitive teacher salaries, or programs such as career-technical education, full-day kindergarten and “other urgent priorities,” according to Reclaim Idaho’s website. They would not go to administrative salaries.
Mayville said the initiative would help make funding more equitable for districts across the state. As it stands now, some districts, such as Boise’s, are better funded because of property tax values.
“Funding from the state goes out on a per-student basis, whereas funding from property taxes is determined by the property wealth of the district,” Mayville said.
The impacts of a shortage of education funding
Educators and students told the Idaho Statesman they have seen the effects of the state’s education budget.
When Debbie Reid-Oleson was a counselor at an elementary school in Idaho, she said she started out serving one school of about 500 students. But when there wasn’t enough money and something needed to get cut, counseling was one of the first programs targeted, she said. She was assigned to serve as the counselor for two schools, doubling the number of students under her watch.
“There’s no way I could do the job that I was doing,” she told the Statesman. “I really had to pick and choose.”
In her position, the idea was to spend about one-third of her time in the classroom teaching proactive skills, so that when students were in a crisis, they had an idea of what to do. She would schedule classroom presentations on conflict resolution and bullying. But when funding meant positions got cut, those visits got cut in half.
“My background gives me an understanding from the inside of what it’s like to not have the kind of funding from the state that we need,” she said.
Now, she is a volunteer co-leader for Reclaim Idaho’s Bingham County signature drive.
But it’s not just counseling programs that Reid-Oleson is fighting for.
“I’m hoping that when this passes, this Legislature will realize that the people of Idaho want their schools to be funded fairly and equitably,” she said. “The way that it is right now, it’s not equitable.”
Paying and keeping teachers
Idaho’s teacher salaries consistently rank behind those of neighboring states, leaving some districts struggling to retain educators who could get better offers elsewhere.
According to a report from the Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy, between 2009 and 2019, the average teacher salary in Idaho, adjusted for inflation, fell from about $55,000 to $53,000.
While teachers in Idaho were worse off, those in Washington, Oregon and Wyoming saw their salaries grow by an average of about 12% from 2009 to 2019. In Wyoming, the average teacher salary for the 2019-2020 school year was $59,014, in Oregon it was $67,685 and in Washington it was $72,965, according to the report.
“Teachers are front-line workers charged with the critical job of addressing the impacts of learning loss from the pandemic,” Kirsten Pochop, policy analyst with the Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy, said in a statement.
“Policymakers would be wise to make the continued investments needed to ensure kids can succeed and our state has the workforce needed to keep our businesses strong and power our recovery from the recession.”
According to the most recent report from the National Education Association, Idaho spent an average of about $7,833 per student during the 2020-2021 school year, putting it last in per-pupil spending. The state has ranked at the bottom for years, and falls far short of the national spending average per pupil of $14,243.
Reid-Oleson said having well-funded schools is something everyone should want — even those families whose kids don’t go to public schools.
“It’s important that all kids are educated properly,” she said. “You have to live with them and work with them. … I think everybody should be interested in a quality education.”
How does the initiative get on the ballot?
To put the initiative in front of the voting public, volunteers need to gather signatures from 6% of registered voters from at least 18 legislative districts, and from 6% of voters statewide.
Reclaim Idaho sued the Idaho Legislature after it passed a law that would have required the organization to collect signatures from at least 6% of voters in all 35 legislative districts. The Idaho Supreme Court late last month ruled the law was unconstitutional. In its opinion, the court wrote that the effect of the law was “to prevent a perceived, yet unsubstantiated fear of the ‘tyranny of the majority,’ by replacing it with an actual ‘tyranny of the minority.’ ”
“It’s an historic decision because not only did the court strike down the anti-initiatives law,” Mayville said, “the court also recognized the initiative process as a fundamental right of the people of Idaho.”
Since the ruling, Mayville said Reclaim Idaho has not changed its strategy to get the education initiative on the ballot, but is ramping up its signature drive.
“We are doing everything we can to harness the enthusiasm that came with the court decision and channel that enthusiasm toward action,” he said.
Reclaim Idaho is touring the state, going from community to community, he said. The group is also looking for local leaders in different towns across the state. Leaders can be retired or current educators, or just concerned citizens who “want the best for the next generation,” Mayville said.
The initiative has received positive responses so far, especially since the outcome of the court decision, he said. People are interested in learning more about what the decision means and what the education initiative is about.
Mayville said that about 15,000 signatures have been collected so far, from most legislative districts. The deadline to submit the proper amount of signatures is May.
“We are building momentum to get there,” he said. “For now, our work is to just keep on getting out into communities, recruiting more volunteers, putting together more successful events and engaging with voters all across the state.”
‘It’s our future’
In early July, a group of students broke into small groups, put on matching green Reclaim Idaho shirts and walked through a neighborhood in Boise, going door to door with a clipboard, pen and stump speech.
Flannery Streiff, a junior at Boise High School who was volunteering, said she felt it was important for young people like her to get involved.
“People mainly focus on politics at a national scale, when, instead of focusing on that, it starts in your state and with your community,” she said. “And in Idaho, sometimes it’s kind of frustrating, how much you have to push to get things that you want done.”
Streiff, who said she’s committed to doing what she can to make Idaho a better state and to improve her community, noted that she sees the lack of funding show up in the arts program. She’s seen fewer resources being put toward the arts, which she said could particularly affect low-income households.
She said it was “disappointing” and “embarrassing” to find out Idaho ranked last in funding per student.
“It just makes me want to fight it,” she said.
Alex Bude, a senior at Timberline High School, said the Boise School District is lucky to be better funded than many others. But still, schools across Idaho need more money, he said.
“We are painfully aware of the lack of funding that our education gets, especially here in Idaho,” Bude said. “And we know that even what we have is, like, starvation budget. We know what it’s like to not have enough funding for education, and it’s something we want to change and it’s something we know we have the power to change.”
Teachers often are stretched thin and forced to work without enough resources, he said.
Cara Halford, a junior at Timberline High School, said she wants to make sure all students have access to a quality education.
“It’s more than money,” she said. “It’s our future. It’s the next generation’s future. And we need to be looking out for that.”
This story was originally published September 19, 2021 at 4:00 AM.
