Schools Get Leeway In Spending Lawmakers Ask Districts To Put Savings Into Books, Buildings

State Schools Superintendent Anne Fox picked up more backing from legislative budget writers on Thursday when they requested school districts use savings from a reduction in employee pension contributions for books and buildings and not teachers’ salaries.

Although the proposal adopted unanimously by the Joint FinanceAppropriations Committee imposes no mandate on the districts, it does give local administrators political cover if they want to deny teacher demands that millions of dollars statewide be used for salaries.

Sen. Dean Cameron, R-Rupert, maintained that the directive actually gives the 112 districts more leeway in handling an estimated $6 million they are saving this calendar year because the state pension fund reduced the contribution rate for both employers and employees.

Late last year, Fox urged lawmakers to prohibit use of those pension contribution savings for teacher salaries, further widening the gulf between the superintendent and the state’s teachers association.

Gov. Phil Batt urged state agencies to use the savings as a way to give employees pay raises that lawmakers declined to underwrite in the current budget. But Fox maintained that schools districts gave teachers raises this year so that the extra money should be used for other needs.

The Idaho Education Association objects to the directive.

“For them to say that teachers got raises so they should not get that money is ridiculous,” association research director Rob Nicholson said. Later, the Senate adopted legislation that requires the money being spent under Batt’s 1995 property tax relief bill be reflected in the annual state aid allocation to public schools.

Advocates called it nothing more than an a accounting procedure to make lawmakers aware of where the state’s tax money is going.

But skeptics contended it was a thinly veiled election-year attempt to try to fool the people into thinking the Legislature increased education support more than it really did.