Black Has Basic Plan For Schools Conservative Republican Stresses Phonics, State-Funded School Board Training Program

At the Little Red Schoolhouse day-care center, deadbeat parents sometimes didn’t pay their bills. Sick kids showed up and infected everyone.

Parents who called, looking for day care, seemed uninterested in programs and just wanted to know where and how much.

That was what launched Ron Black into politics.

When the Twin Falls resident first ran for office, he pushed for better state day-care licensing. With the backing of the Idaho Education Association, he defeated conservative Rep. Donna Scott in the GOP primary 12 years ago and got a new licensing system his first year as a legislator.

Black says that $3,000 IEA donation was his last from the organization. Since then, he’s staked out the conservative side of the Republican spectrum, far from the traditionally Democratic teachers association. Now, he’s offering himself as the conservative alternative to state schools Superintendent Anne Fox, who won office four years ago with the backing of her party’s conservative wing.

Black is particularly critical of Fox’s proposal to raise the sales tax by a penny to fund new school buildings. “The higher the taxes, the more parents who are trying to stay home are forced into the workplace to work,” Black said.

He’s one of three Republicans trying to unseat Fox in the primary. Two Democrats also are running.

Black isn’t worried that he’s the only Republican who’s never been a teacher or school superintendent.

“We’ve had professional superintendents, and that’s why we’re in the mess we’re in,” he said. “They’re too close to the system to make the kind of changes that we believe need to be made.”

The first change Black suggests is a back-to-basics approach. He’d lay out a three-pronged reading program: “Intensive phonics, a remedial component and an accelerated component, so that every child reads at or above grade level starting at Grade 1.”

He’d couple that with more specific “exiting standards” for each grade to achieve. He’d also like to cut back on assemblies and activities that take time away from basic learning.

Jerry Evans, the Republican who was state superintendent from 1978-1994, isn’t impressed.

“Trying to take a system back to basics that never left the basics doesn’t make much sense,” he said.

Black’s second plan is to cut the Department of Education and use the money to train school board members. “One of the things we hear around the state is how many school boards have gotten in trouble because they relied on the superintendent,” Black said.

The third change is to carve out funding for local school buildings from within the state’s $700 million-plus operating budget for schools.

“We don’t need to raise taxes,” Black said. If teachers went without a raise for a year, he said, “you could pick up $20 million.”

“It builds into the base once you fund it, so it’s there every year.”

That amount could match 20 percent of local school bond payments the first year, Black estimated. Then, if more money is added over the years, the state could work up to a 40-percent match, with local taxpayers paying 60 percent.

Now, local taxpayers pay the full amount. “It’s just a matter of where you set the priorities - are buildings a priority?” Black said.

Black opposes raising taxes to fund school buildings, and lowering the two-thirds supermajority required to pass a school construction bond.

Idaho has hundreds of millions of dollars in school contruction needs. It’s the only state that requires both a two-thirds supermajority for school bonds and puts no state money into construction.

Evans said, “You can’t fund school buildings by cutting back on instructional salaries. It doesn’t make any sense.”

Evans said addressing the building problem will require lowering the supermajority, committing state money and equalizing any state money so it doesn’t help rich districts more than poor districts. “That requires some real analysis and planning that no one I’ve heard seems to be willing to address.”

Black’s harsh words for Idaho’s education establishment promise some of the same conflicts that incumbent Anne Fox has seen.

Last year he backed a proposal to put the state superintendent over the state board. The superintendent now is part of the eight-member board, which oversees both public schools and higher education.

“That puts that elected official underneath an appointed board,” Black said. “You don’t have a board of attorneys general supervising the attorney general. It’s not constitutionally based.”

Evans, who held the post for 16 years, said changes aren’t needed as long as the superintendent and board exercise “a certain amount of finesse and common sense.”

“It’s worked for many, many years,” he said.

IN THIS SERIES This is the second in a series of profiles of the six candidates for Idaho state schools superintendent. Complete resumes and letters of application from each candidate appeared May 3, and also are posted on The Idaho Spokesman-Review’s Internet site at www.spokane.net. Sunday: Republican incumbent Anne Fox. Today: Republican Ron Black. Tuesday: Republicans Ryan Kerby and Tom Morley. Wednesday: Democrats Wally Hedrick and Marilyn Howard.