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Editorial: Idaho’s kids need more help from lawmakers

Wed., June 17, 2015

The Idaho Legislature ended the year in overtime, a strange special session on child support and international treaties. The next regular session should begin with child support of another kind: more education funding.

Though lawmakers increased funding for schools and teachers, the state still finds itself in last place nationwide in per-pupil funding, according to an analysis by the Idaho Statesman. This is bad for children and the economy.

Legislators boosted K-12 spending by 7.4 percent, including an additional $33.5 million to finance the first year of a new five-year teacher-pay plan. But in inflation-adjusted dollars, that outlay still lags the per-student spending of 2006-07 by 18.6 percent, and it keeps the state in last place.

It doesn’t help that state schools Superintendent Sherri Ybarra called for a smaller increase than lawmakers delivered. The top education official must be more aggressive if the state’s schools are to improve.

House Speaker Scott Bedke called the sorely needed teacher-pay bill “a turning point for the education system here in the state.” Gov. Butch Otter said, “We focused on what we should’ve been focusing on all the time, and that was the student in the classroom.”

Both should hold that thought, because the school system needs sustained support. In 2006 dollars, general fund per-pupil spending fell from $5,146 for the 2006-07 school year to $4,190 for 2013-14, according to the Statesman. Recession-related budget cuts and inflation explain the decline. It takes $1.17 today to buy what a dollar bought in 2006.

As in Washington, some school districts filled shortfalls with supplemental levies, but too much of that creates unequal funding that isn’t fair to students in districts that can’t pass levies.

Historically, the Idaho Legislature has been keen on lowering the property tax and increasing the sales tax, but this strategy has harmed schools. As former legislator Robert C. Huntley pointed out in a recent Statesman op-ed, the state has added so many sales-tax breaks over the years that the exemptions add up to more ($1.7 billion a year) than the tax itself collects ($1 billion).

The Legislature tried to finance education on the cheap with an aggressive online instruction strategy, but that experiment ended in disaster. To their credit, lawmakers backed out of that plan and put the school system on a steadier course.

But it will take several years of funding increases before Idaho can catch up to other states, and to its previous effort. Even the heralded teacher-pay plan could fall short. A 2 percent inflation rate between now and the 2019-20 school year could mean a mere 1 percent pay raise in real dollars. That would put Idaho back where it is now – losing teachers to surrounding states that pay more.

Idaho’s leaders should look at the last legislative session as the first step in a long journey. The state can’t afford another detour.