House rejects education plan
BOISE – A week after a House committee quashed legislation mandating minimum safety standards for Idaho day-care centers, the full House rejected a nonbinding resolution asking state agencies to create learning program standards for young children.
The resolution, HCR 18, also would have pushed the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare to create a quality-based ranking system for distributing federal child care money to day cares and preschools.
Suspicious lawmakers, some of whom compared the proposal to something from Communist Russia, killed the resolution Monday after expressing concerns that it infringes on parents’ role in raising kids. But supporters said better standards are needed to help low-income children and kids of single mothers.
The House voted 43-27 against the measure.
The rambling debate echoed last week’s discussion of the failed child care licensing bill advanced by Rep. George Sayler, D-Coeur d’Alene. House Education Committee Chairman Bob Nonini, R-Coeur d’Alene, called the resolution an end-run around Sayler’s failed bill, which some lawmakers opposed because they said mothers should stay home with children.
“I can share with the body that this legislation is the proverbial camel’s nose under the tent,” Nonini said. “I think it’s a road we don’t want to go down.”
Sayler said his bill and HCR 18 were complementary but separate.
“They are both, however, very important issues,” he said.
HCR 18 states that “all children deserve the right to be cared for in a safe and enriching environment.” But kids are increasingly being cared for by people other than their parents, and “there is currently no way for Idaho parents and guardians to differentiate between providers of preschool child care.”
The resolution would have asked the Department of Health and Welfare to rank the quality of day cares and channel federal Child Care and Development Fund money to centers based on those rankings. The department distributes the federal funds as child care subsidies to low-income working families and students through the Idaho Child Care Program.
Parents should be able to choose between levels of day care, Sayler said.
“In the ideal world, every mother or father would take care of their child at home,” he said. “In the real world, that is not happening.”
Rep. Lenore Barrett, R-Challis, said asking state agencies to create standards eliminates market forces. It’s a “worthy goal, maybe, but it’s pie in the sky, and it just gives us warm, fuzzy legislation,” she said. “In old Russia, the state owned children for all intents and purposes” while women dug ditches and the “truly talented people defected.”
“This is not the proper role of government,” she said.
Sponsors, however, said the bill encourages competition and offers only suggestions. While the state disperses the federal money, it doesn’t leverage it to improve care for children, said Rep. Margaret Henbest, D-Boise.
“Very often, these are single mothers, and we all have an opinion about that, but like it or not, there are single mothers in Idaho,” she said. “This is not the fearful communistic plot that you think it is.”
Nonini is a co-sponsor of a competing resolution, HCR 24, that encourages state education officials to promote programs that help parents train children 5 and younger rather than providing preschool for those kids, except for children with special needs designated by the federal government. The House amended the bill Monday, adding that “many other states have established statewide prekindergarten programs that have had limited success while families have a proven record of success.”
Nonini said the state shouldn’t pay more money for preschool programs when all parents can take a few minutes at night to read to their kids.
“I’m just not a preschool fan,” Nonini said. “I’m a huge parental-involvement person.”
HCR 24 is a partly a reaction to a Senate bill that would change the minimum age for preschool from 5 to 4, Nonini said.