JFAC backs $3.5M boost to Opportunity Scholarship fund, short of Otter’s $5M proposal
Instead of the $5 million increase in Idaho’s Opportunity Scholarship fund that Gov. Butch Otter’s been backing – which would boost the fund to $15 million a year – legislative budget writers today approved a $3.5 million increase.
“The group settled on $3.5 million,” said Rep. Wendy Horman, R-Idaho Falls, who proposed the successful motion; it was seconded by Senate Education Chairman Dean Mortimer, R-Idaho Falls, and was crafted with a group of JFAC members that, in addition to Horman and Mortimer, included Reps. Melissa Wintrow, D-Boise, and Phylis King, D-Boise, and Sen. Jeff Agenbroad, R-Nampa. “It was a compromise.”
Legislation that cleared the Senate Education Committee last week contemplates not only increasing the fund, but also allowing up to 20 percent of it in the future to be used for “adult completers” returning to college to finish their degrees, in addition to the high school graduates going on to college that the scholarship now benefits. Horman said under the compromise, up to $2.7 million could become available for adult completers, if that Senate bill passes, and there’d also be another $800,000 boost for the traditional Opportunity Scholarship applicants.
In fiscal year 2018, the state Board of Education received 4,055 applications from eligible Idaho students for the Opportunity Scholarship, but put 1,780 of them on a waiting list because there wasn’t enough money to give scholarships to all of them.
The addition to the scholarship fund would allow 1,042 more students to get scholarships; the governor’s higher education task force recommended boosting the fund to lower the cost of college and improve access for Idaho students.
The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee backed the compromise unanimously, 20-0, as part of a budget motion for special programs that fall under the state Board of Education. Also included within the special programs budget bill are a $188,000 appropriation and 1.5 positions to boost the TechHelp program by hiring two manufacturing specialists in eastern and northern Idaho, with the University of Idaho Extension funding the other half-position; and $53,500 for the Small Business Development Program to add two part-time positions to assist Idaho businesses with government contracting through the Procurement Technical Assistance Center. Those workers also would be located in northern and eastern Idaho.
