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Eye On Boise

Luna: There’s broad, bipartisan support to stick to current year school budget, not remove any funds

Tom Luna addresses the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee (Betsy Russell)
Tom Luna addresses the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee (Betsy Russell)

State lawmakers should stick to the funding total that they promised schools for the current year, despite voters’ rejection of Propositions 1, 2 and 3, state schools Supt. Tom Luna told JFAC this morning. “It is important and necessary that districts and schools receive the money that they were expecting,” he said. “Even in the deepest part of the great recession, our generations are seeing this legislature never cut our public schools in the middle of the school year. Not restoring these funds now would amount to that, and I see no justification to cut schools in the middle of the school year either.”

Luna said there’s broad bipartisan support to stick to the 2013 budget total and not move any of those funds away from schools, and he lauded lawmakers for that. Those funds include $4.85 million for additional math and science teachers, $842,000 for dual-credit courses for high school students, $24.6 million in “use it or lose it” flexibility, $4 million to unfreeze education credits on the salary schedule for teachers, and $13.6 million for classroom technology and professional development.



Betsy Z. Russell
Betsy Z. Russell joined The Spokesman-Review in 1991. She currently is a reporter in the Boise Bureau covering Idaho state government and politics, and other news from Idaho's state capital.

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