Senate rejects teacher pay raise

Fri., Feb. 17, 2006

The Spokesman-Review

Coeur d’Alene Republican Sen. John Goedde’s bill to give pay increases to high school math and science teachers died in the Senate on Wednesday after more than an hour of intense debate.

Senators voted 21-13 to reject SB 1333. Some said they thought it didn’t do enough to increase the number of math and science teachers because it wouldn’t have given a pay increase until teachers had been on the job for five years. Others said there were better ways to draw teachers, such as forgiving student loans for new math and science instructors.

Another bill from Goedde, SB 1378, which would increase the number of charter schools allowed in Idaho from six to 12, was held in the Senate Education Committee, which Goedde chairs, to allow him time to determine its cost.

– Meghann M. Cuniff

Blanchard

Bonner County seeks to close cat shelter

Bonner County officials want to shut down a cat sanctuary in Blanchard where they say hundreds of cats live in ramshackle trailers.

The county has sued a nonprofit group called Voice of the Animals, which takes in sick cats at the sanctuary and attempts to find homes for them.

County officials say the shelter is operating without the permits required by local land-use laws. Voice of the Animals attorney Richard Kuck contends the operation is exempt from permit requirements because it is in a rural zone.

Deputy Prosecutor Louis Marshall said a veterinarian and an official from the Humane Society of the United States visited the shelter in October and reported that conditions there were poor. They said several hundred cats, many of them sick, ran free in a half-dozen mobile homes that were littered with excrement. Some of the cats appeared to be healthy, while others exhibited several ailments.

Veterinarian Jeff Rosenthal, director of the Idaho Humane Society in Boise, concluded that some cats were not receiving adequate care and that the facility needed more staff.

“The level of animal husbandry observed is extremely poor and haphazard,” Rosenthal said in his report.

– Associated Press

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Senate rejects teacher pay raise

Bonner County seeks to close cat shelter

Jesse Tinsley

Jim Meehan

Molly Quinn

Rob Curley

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