Despite state lawmakers’ move this year to increase state funding for schools by 7.4 percent, school funding remains 6 percent below the 2006-07 level, the Idaho Statesman reports, when measured on a per-student basis, and 18.6 percent lower than 06-07 when inflation is taken into account. “It puts a huge perspective on why school districts in Idaho are struggling like they are,” West Ada School District Superintendent Linda Clark told Statesman reporter Bill Roberts.

Nancy Landon, administrator of budget and finance for the Boise School District, told the Statesman, “Nobody listens about inflation or consumer price index or anything like that. That is why you are seeing those huge increases in those supplemental levies. They had to go somewhere else to get the revenue.”

Roberts’ full report is online here. He reports that state general fund appropriations for K-12 public schools have been rising since 2012-13, but are still below pre-2009 levels when adjusted for inflation, and that’s before accounting for enrollment growth.

Meanwhile, the latest report from the U.S. Census on per-pupil spending by states, which came out June 2 and reflects 2013 data, showed Idaho ranked 50th – next-to-last among the 50 states plus the District of Columbia – for per-pupil spending on public elementary and secondary education, edged out only by 51^st-place Utah. (It's on page 29 of the report, in the fifth column from the left.) The Census showed Idaho per-pupil spending for 2013 at $6,791 compared to Utah’s $6,555. Highest was New York at $19,818; the U.S. average was $10,700.