School budget debate begins…

The public schools budget, the single largest slice of Idaho’s state budget, is set in six individual pieces. The first up this morning is the Division of Administrators. Sen. Dean Mortimer, R-Idaho Falls, proposed a motion with no line items added that reflects a 5.5 percent increase in state general funds, due to growing student population. Rep. Shirley Ringo, D-Moscow, proposed a substitute motion adding in unfreezing one year of the frozen salary grid for additional experience. Ringo explained that a major difference between the Democratic motions this morning for all public school divisions, and the Republican motions, is that the Republicans are proposing to raise the minimum teacher salary next year from $30,000 to $30,500, while the Democrats are proposing the unfreezing of the salary grid instead.

The salary grid provides that as teachers (or administrators) gain additional education or years of experience, their salary rises by small increments. However, Idaho froze the grid as part of the past few years’ budget crunch, and two years of experience-based raises were never given out. Last year’s “Students Come First” reform law unfroze the education portion of the grid, so teachers are now just one year behind on the education-based schedule, while they’re two years behind on the experience-based schedule.

The unfreezing of the salary grid for one past year, as Ringo proposed, would cost $6.1 million. The boost in the minimum teacher salary of $500 would cost $2.9 million.