Schools Vs. State Does The State Of Idaho Have A Legal And Moral Obligation To Pay For School Buildings? In Opposing Essays, Robert C. Huntley And Jerry Twiggs Argue Over What The State’S Role Should Be.

The Idaho Constitution gives the Legislature the responsibility to establish and maintain a general, uniform, and thorough system of public, free common schools. The Legislature takes this responsibility seriously.

Since Idaho’s centennial year of 1990, the general fund appropriation for public schools increased from $450 million to $741 million for the current school year.

During this same time of increased appropriations, the state and the Legislature have been defending themselves against a lawsuit. Rather than working with the Legislature and local school districts to address specific problems, the plaintiffs in that suit have asked the courts to intervene and to declare that Idaho’s school funding system is inadequate to provide a thorough education.

Over the years the issues in that lawsuit have been whittled down so that the Supreme Court has now left only one issue to try. That issue is whether Idaho schools can provide a safe environment under the health and safety codes adopted by the state Board of Education.

Members of the Legislature, like all Idahoans, want every public school to be safe and want violations of health and safety codes to be corrected. To that end, many legislators want to consider legislation this session that will give school districts the tools to correct any unsafe or unhealthy conditions.

This is too important to await trial. One possible solution might be to give districts authority to levy to correct unsafe or unhealthy conditions if the districts do not otherwise have the funds to do so.

Other solutions also may be proposed. In any event, the health and safety of our school children should not take a back seat to awaiting the outcome of a trial.

If there is legislation, it should be specific to the problem. There is no $700 million backlog of health and safety violations waiting to be fixed.

Although there are no hard numbers on the costs of bringing Idaho’s schools into health and safety code compliance, the cost would be a tiny fraction of that amount.

Further, there is no need for a direct state appropriation to address health and safety issues. Local decisions on how best to maintain and repair locally owned school facilities are better decisions than state-dictated and state-funded ones.

Mr. Huntley, the attorney for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, also claims that 40 percent of Idaho’s sales taxes are paid by tourists and out-of-state shareholders. There is no basis for that figure.

The state Tax Commission has never seen those numbers. Sales taxes are not 40 percent generated by tourists; they come primarily from in-state residents like you and me. There is no free lunch for increased sales tax revenues.

It is time to fix any unsafe conditions in Idaho’s schools. The Legislature will work to do so this session.

See opposing view by Robert C. Huntley under the headline: Schools vs. state