Gov. Little touts ‘major wins’ for Idaho schools. What do superintendents say?
Idaho Gov. Brad Little celebrated funding for public education as a highlight of this year’s legislative session. But superintendents from public school districts around the state don’t share his enthusiasm.
Little at a Monday news conference held up education funding — including for rural school facilities, increased teacher salaries and literacy — as one of the primary areas in which “the Idaho Legislature and I worked together to really achieve some major wins for the state.”
One superintendent told the Idaho Statesman that a $100 million increase for teacher salaries this year would help keep teaching positions competitive amid shortages. Another said he was “all for” $5 million allocated to train teachers on methods to teach kids how to read.
But Dennis Chestnut, the superintendent of Horseshoe Bend School District, pushed back on Little’s claim that the session was an overall win for education.
Outside of increases for teacher salaries and literacy spending, “any claimed funding increase by the governor or state legislators is mostly spin,” Chestnut told the Statesman by email. “I don’t see many other positive results from this legislative session for rural districts, or any districts, really.”
Idaho tax credits for private school
Chestnut and three other superintendents — from Nampa, Fruitland and North Gem school districts — expressed misgivings about the state’s failure to fill an approximately $80 million funding gap for special education and its lack of funding for operations and facilities maintenance amid inflation and rising costs.
They also said they worry that a new $50 million in tax credits for families pursuing private education or homeschooling will pull money out of the public school system. Legislators who crafted the law have argued that funding for public and private schools aren’t mutually exclusive. But as government school-voucher programs have expanded in other states, that funding has often come at the expense of public education, according to the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank focused on the effects of policies on low- and middle-income families.
Stoney Winston, superintendent of the Fruitland School District, criticized lawmakers’ decision to provide money for private school students — often marketed as a way to increase families’ schooling options if their children have special needs — rather than closing the special education funding gap in public schools.
A March report by the Legislature’s nonpartisan Office of Performance Evaluations found that Idaho was underfunding special education by about $80 million each year. The state budgeted for each school district to offer such support to about 6% of students — when in reality, about 12% of students in every district required special education as of 2023.
“I think most folks in my role don’t see (the session) as a big win,” Winston told the Statesman. “People are saying that their students might be able to succeed better at a private school. I believe that if public education was funded appropriately for the special education (needs) that we have, that we could expand.”
Winston said he believed the additional money now being used for the tax credits should be used to fulfill the state’s “constitutional obligation” to properly fund public schools. The Idaho Constitution calls for the Legislature to maintain a “general, uniform and thorough system” of public schools, which are required to educate every student, including those with disabilities or students who have individualized learning plans.
Emily Callihan, a spokesperson for Little’s office, in response to those criticisms pointed to the governor’s history in the past few years of supporting public education, and highlighted that public school funding increased nearly 60% since Little took office in 2019.
“Gov. Little and the Idaho Legislature have invested historic amounts in teacher pay and benefits along with school facilities, literacy, discretionary spending, and other tools teachers need to serve Idaho students and their families,” Callihan told the Statesman by email. “While there is still more to do, Idaho is making good progress in addressing the multitude of needs within our public school system.”
Idaho teacher pay, funds for school buildings
The Legislature did offer some support by increasing teacher salaries, but the picture is less rosy when it comes to implementing those raises, Nampa School District Superintendent Gregg Russell told the Statesman.
The district is required to meet a state minimum requirement for starting salaries — but it struggles to do so because it hires more staff than the state has allocated for its district, in part to accommodate students with higher needs. It then has to make up the difference with its own savings to ensure all staffers are receiving the minimum salary, said Matt Sizemore, a spokesperson for the district.
Similarly, Kyler Miller, the superintendent of North Gem School District, said the money lawmakers provided for school facilities was difficult for districts to access: They would need to have failed a levy or bond within the last two years, and they would need an inspector to certify that the building is unsafe.
The lone school building in his district, which serves kindergarten through 12th grade, doesn’t meet those conditions, even though the building is nearly 100 years old, Miller said.
The amount of state funding allocated to public education this year has been the subject of debate. Rep. Wendy Horman, R-Idaho Falls, had touted $400 million in new public school funding, but the Idaho Department of Education’s chief financial officer in early May noted that much of that money was reallocated from other state funds. Little on Monday did not cite a total amount allocated to public school funding this year.
Miller called claims about new funding “very misleading.”
“As far as saying it’s a huge win for education overall, I don’t know if I agree with that,” he said. “I think that there’s some positives that came out of this (session), but I definitely think that there’s work to be done.”
