Help save Idaho schools

We welcome visitors from Eastern Washington to our town. Please bring a mask and protect us from our rising COVID caseload.

If you live in Idaho, please sign the school funding initiative petition: https://tinyurl.com/fundidschools

If passed in November, the initiative would fund our schools with an extra $170 million, the money to be raised from taxing corporations, and couples who have incomes over $500,000 (singles over $250,000).

Idaho is dead last in per-pupil funding among all 50 states. We are hemorrhaging teachers.

Governor Little plans to cut school funding by $99 million.

Idaho’s K-12 spending as a share of total personal income in Idaho has declined to 3.5% — now as low as it was during the late 1970s.

The U.S. Supreme Court just opened the door to more funding for religious schools. Our state funding of public schools will now have to be spread thinner. Parents of children in religious schools have good reason to vote for the initiative.

With ballot initiatives we can remedy what the legislature has failed to address for too long.

Don’t sign the petition online if you are among the 15,000 Idahoans who have already signed the paper petition this spring. Reclaim Idaho decided early on not to go door-to-door because of COVID. We need 30,000 more signatures state-wide in little more than a month and a half. The first day of electronic signing yielded 3,000.

More information is available on the Reclaim Idaho site, reclaimidaho.org. Or email me: nancygerth@gmail.com.

Nancy Gerth

Sagle