Idaho lawmakers passed these bills to retain and attract teachers. Is it enough?
Idaho lawmakers passed a host of education-related bills this session at a time when teachers across the state have faced changes stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic, attacks over curricula and a rising cost of living.
Lawmakers and educators have praised the work legislators did this session for making historic investments in education and passing bills they hope will help retain and attract teachers.
But there’s still more work to do, lawmakers and educators said.
“I think it’s a step in the right direction,” Layne McInelly, president of the Idaho Education Association, told the Idaho Statesman. “I don’t think that we are at the finish line by any means when it comes to attracting and retaining educators to the state of Idaho. We need to continue to show them that they’re valued and they’re respected.”
Bills give teachers bonuses, cut insurance costs
The Legislature put about $104 million of state and federal funds toward the career ladder for teacher salaries and passed a bill that provides all teachers, administrators, pupil service staff and classified staff members $1,000 bonuses.
The career ladder places instructional and pupil service staff based on their experience. Teachers move up the ladder as they gain more experience, and are compensated with raises.
“In regards to attraction and retention of educators, salary benefits and respect are the top things that they were looking for this legislative session,” McInelly said.
Lacey Watkins, an intervention teacher in Moscow, said she was grateful to see those bonuses extended to paraprofessionals as well, who she said are sometimes “stretched pretty thin” and are key to academic success. Lawmakers and educators have worried about paraprofessionals being forced to leave their jobs for those that provide better pay and benefits.
Another win touted by lawmakers was the passage of a bill to ease the burden of health insurance costs on school employees. Legislators created a fund of about $75 million for public schools to buy into the state’s medical and dental insurance plan and allotted an ongoing $105 million a year toboost funding for school employees’ health insurance costs.
Lawmakers said new health insurance fund likely won’t allow all districts to buy into the plan, but it is a big investment and a good starting point.
Some school employees work solely for their health insurance, McInelly said. During a committee meeting earlier this year, speaking in support of this bill, McInelly said bus drivers and custodians were choosing to go to other companies that offered better salaries and benefits, and teachers were considering leaving the classroom. Health insurance costs played a big part in that, he said.
Another bill added a “fix” so instructional and service staff coming in from out of state or returning to teaching in Idaho could be placed on a higher rung of the career ladder based on their experience when they are first hired.
Legislators also passed a bill to help incentivize teachers to work and stay in rural areas. That bill would provide educators in rural or high-need schools districts or charter schools with the maximum amount of eligible funding each year that could be used for education loan repayments, additional degrees, advanced degrees, or other educational costs. That amount would increase each year an educator was at the school, up to four years.
Sen. Janie Ward-Engelking, D-Boise, said the incentive is something she’s worked on for years. Idaho has a teacher shortage that is even more pronounced in rural and underserved schools, she said.
“We were looking for a tool that would convince educators to stay,” she said, adding that similar versions have been successful in other states.
Idaho teacher salaries remain low
All of these bills were designed to help increase the amount of money teachers take home in their paychecks. Gov. Brad Little had also made education and investing in teachers a priority in his budget this year.
But lawmakers acknowledged Idaho still lags compared with other bordering states.
Between 2009 and 2019, the average teacher salary in Idaho, adjusted for inflation, fell from about $55,000 to $53,000, according to report from the Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy, a nonprofit research firm. While teachers in Idaho were paid less, 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.
“We’re not going to be competing in the same salary ranges as states like Washington and some of Oregon,” Rep. Lance Clow, R-Twin Falls, who chairs the House Education Committee, told the Statesman. “But we’ve made some tremendous improvements this year.”
Idaho also consistently ranks last or near last in its funding per student. But Clow praised teachers for doing an “outstanding job and delivering a good education” to students with the funds allotted.
“We’re not on the bottom in our learning. Our students are doing very well,” he said. “So it’s not always about the money.”
Quinn Perry from the Idaho School Boards Association told the Statesman that all of these bills will help attract teachers to the education profession, but also “hopefully ensure that these folks feel appreciated by policymakers and the executive branch.”
Dyslexia, full-day kindergarten addressed
A number of other bills this session were focused on better serving students, and educators said those were also big wins for them.
That includes a bill on dyslexia, which is intended to help schools better identify students with characteristics of dyslexia, give them proper interventions and provide teachers with the professional development to understand how to help dyslexic students learn to read.
“I think teachers are going to look to the policies that benefit kids more than they’ll ever look at how a salary benefits them personally,” Perry said.
Lawmakers and educators also pointed to the additional $46.6 million in literacy funds that school districts could use to fund optional full-day kindergarten, a change teachers, parents and administrators have been pushing for. Another bill passed this year could help get more counselors into schools by creating an addition so licensed professional counselors and licensed clinical professional counselors to be “included within the legal definition of school counselors.”
Legislators approved updated content standards for English language arts, math and science, which lawmakers have praised as getting rid of Common Core. The standards were put together by groups of teachers, lawmakers, and education leaders, and lawmakers said they were simplified and streamlined. Content standards lay out what students are expected to know in each grade.
Sen. Steven Thayn, R-Emmett, who chairs the Senate Education committee, also brought up the self-directed learner bill, which he described as a classroom management tool.
The bill allows students to get more flexibility in the classroom if they show a mastery of content knowledge and are designated as “self-directed learners.” Thayn said it rewards students who stay on task, could reduce teacher stress and create a better classroom environment.
“We had a big year in education,” Clow told the Statesman. “If we think about what’s good for the students, that’s usually good for the teachers as well.”
Lawmakers pass ‘harmful’ materials on libraries bill
Although educators and education groups said this session was largely successful, they still were discouraged by certain bills — especially those they have had to fight before.
A bill that would have created scholarship accounts that families could use for students’ tuition and fees at private grade schools — often known as school vouchers —was held in committee after members of the public said it would harm public schools and wasn’t a constitutional use of state dollars.
“That takes a lot of energy out of our members,” said Peggy Hoy, an instructional coach in the Twin Falls School District and National Education Association director. “They feel attacked and they feel like their voice doesn’t matter. We communicate why these bills are bad for education every year, but then they bring them back.”
Another bill that concerned educators was one that would have made libraries and schools liable for distributing “harmful” materials to minors. Opponents said the bill was vague and would have criminalized librarians. The bill did not receive a hearing in the Senate, but the House did approve a resolution that creates a working group to study children’s access to “harmful” materials in libraries.
Hoy said she had teachers email her after that legislation was introduced, saying, “I’m done, I can’t do this anymore.”
Libraries are a critical part of schools and communities, Watkins said, adding that bills that question the integrity or ethics of school employees can “weigh on us.”
“I’m sad to say that I think the poor libraries took a hit this year,” Ward-Engelking told the Statesman. “I think there’s always going to be a group that’s in the cross hairs.”
Less focus on critical race theory
Educators and lawmakers pointed to key differences this session compared to last, which had a more significant focus on claims of critical race theory and indoctrination in Idaho schools.
Lawmakers last year cut more than $2 million from university budgets and passed a bill that prohibits schools and universities from directing students to “affirm, adopt or adhere” to the idea that any sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color or national origin is “inherently superior or inferior” or that people of a certain race or identity are “inherently responsible for actions committed in the past.”
“I think the tune was a lot different this session than it was last year,” Perry said. “To me, the most important thing was that we didn’t demean the profession this year.”
Last year, Perry said, she struggled to point out more than a few bills that were really beneficial to teachers, and this year she saw a lot more of that.
Legislators passed a resolution this session that called out critical race theory and “The 1619 Project” specifically as “divisive content,” and encouraged schools to teach history “clearly and wholly,” but overall, legislators proposed fewer pieces of legislation and held fewer discussions on the issue of critical race theory.
In the past year, audits were done at universities which found no evidence to substantiate allegations of indoctrination happening. Universities also put into place systems to deal with any issues if they came up.
Hoy said she believes certain groups of legislators were still trying to push a “narrative” involving indoctrination and critical race theory. But she said teachers are very transparent, and have done a good job of opening up their classrooms and inviting people in.
“I hope that our legislators continue to remember just how valuable public education is in Idaho and what the educators have done for them and their families, and continue to give them the respect that they deserve,” McInelly said.
Hoy added that the Idaho Education Association worked hard to get its members involved in the process. Earlier this year, the group brought more than 150 educators to Boise to speak with their lawmakers. Teachers want to share their stories and want legislators to know what is going on in the classroom, she said.
“I think what this session did is it empowered our teachers, gave them a voice, and their voice was heard,” she said. “And I don’t know if teachers have felt their voice was heard for a very long time.”
Momentum must continue, educators say
Education advocates said that while lawmakers invested significantly into education this year, more needs to be done — in particular, to raise school employees’ salaries and ensure teachers feel respected.
“I’m very grateful for the positive bills that have come from this session. I think it’s a good start, but I don’t think that it’s enough when we look nationwide and at bordering states,” Watkins said.
Idaho is bordered by states, like Washington, that offer teachers higher salaries, which makes it difficult for Idaho to compete in some cases.
“I think we may have stopped some of the bleeding,” said Sen. David Nelson, D-Moscow, but believed it wasn’t enough. “We just have to recognize that teachers are highly skilled professionals … and dedicate more of our state budget to paying teachers.”
Ward-Engelking put it simply: “If we were paying them enough, we wouldn’t have a shortage.”
Lawmakers also raised concerns about a lack of students wanting to pursue teaching as a career.
Benefits and other incentives are important and play a big piece in attracting and retaining teachers, but another big aspect is that people entering the field want to feel valued in their profession, Perry said. That’s especially important after teachers have had to take on additional responsibilities throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and grapple with concerns over safety protocols, learning loss and mental health.
“There’s no magic bullet,” Thayn told the Statesman. “There’s incremental changes that you make that improve things.”
Aging school facilities to address next
Moving forward, lawmakers said they want to continue to focus on increasing teacher pay, but they also want to address other issues, such as aging facilities, mental health and property tax relief.
Nelson told the Statesman that with the large surplus this year, he was disappointed legislators didn’t start to provide more funding for schools to fix their buildings.
“I think the big thing that we missed in education this year was to deal with our school facilities problem,” Nelson told the Statesman. “We have many aging facilities … It’s not a new problem.”
Rep. Sally Toone said housing is also a critical issue, especially in rural areas. The state can’t attract teachers if there is nowhere for them to live, she said, and wants more partnerships between schools and communities to offer teachers housing for a couple of years.
“You can’t just bring someone into your community and say, ‘You’re on your own,’” she said. “It really has to be a conversation and partnership.”
‘Growing pressure’ around school choice
Clow also noted a “big divide” within the education community and parents over school choice. He said that is likely an issue lawmakers will continue to discuss in the coming years.
“There is growing pressure around the country. Many states are finding ways to support parents that are having their children in alternative education, private schools, self-managed education,” he said. “I imagine we’re going to be looking at it again next year.”
Clow said he wants to make sure that what lawmakers do doesn’t detract from public schools, a concern educators and education groups have voiced several times in the past.
“We want to educate kids and make sure they’re properly educated, give parents a choice and flexibility,” he said. “It’s not one size fits all.”
Watkins said educators must build relationships with their legislators. She said it’s important lawmakers know what teachers’ needs are, so they can support students, families and the profession — even though sometimes, she said, it can be difficult to stay engaged when things feel “disheartening.”
McInelly said he also hopes legislators make sure that all schools are fully staffed, which includes counselors, nurses, paraprofessionals and others who are important to helping schools run successfully.
“Right now we are really lacking on some of these professionals that are essential to educating students,” he said.
Legislators overall said they are happy with the strides made this session, and hope to continue that momentum going forward.
“I think we’ve made leaps and bounds, but we still have a ways to go,” Toone said.
