Senate Education Committee Chairman John Goedde, R-Coeur d'Alene, said it likely will take his committee "a number of days" just to go through the details of the school-reform bills. "In an hour, we went through probably 12 pages, and this bill is 60 pages," he said. But, he said, "I think we owe it to committee members to go into this kind of detail."

Goedde said he thinks concerns about raising class sizes that were brought up by hundreds of people who testified to the committee last week can be addressed both with local flexibility to possibly take cuts elsewhere, such as in teacher pay, and possibly by getting more of Idaho's school administrators to each teach a class. "The idea of administrators teaching a class I think needs additional investigation," Goedde said. "I've had complaints over my 11 years here that administrators are out of touch with classroom instructors. What better way to get them in touch than to put them in the classroom?"

Goedde, a sponsor of the Luna reform package - in fact, his name appears first on the list of sponsors of each of the three new bills as well as the two old ones, right above that of Gov. Butch Otter - said of the changes to the package, "I think they're positive."