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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Eye On Boise

The reason: Otter didn’t like phaseout of 99% funding floor for school districts

Gov. Butch Otter's education adviser, Roger Brown, says the reason Otter decided to let HB 315 become law without his signature was that he "wasn't crazy about" its provision for a one-year phaseout of the 99 percent funding floor for school districts; the bill creates a one-year, 97 percent funding floor to ease the transition as that funding protection goes away. "If the districts were going to get all these new tools and all this ability to manage those contracts, and we have technically the ability now to follow our students in real time and more closely link the funding to the student, then there's no need for the 99 percent protection," Brown said. But, he said, it was "important to some of the legislators who worked so hard on this."

Otter didn't have a problem with the bill's other piece, Brown said, which removed a requirement to pay 10 percent severance payments to teachers laid off in the fall due to unexpected drops in enrollment.



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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