Legislature shelves early education grant, but the session isn’t over

BOISE – As the minutes were dwindling away Wednesday on what was expected to be the Legislature’s last day of this year’s session, Rep. Ilana Rubel, D-Boise, gave an impassioned speech on the House floor, pleading with her colleagues to pass one more bill.

SB 1193 would have accepted a $6 million grant approved by President Trump’s administration to help local organizations improve early learning in their communities for children up to age 5. The Senate narrowly passed the early learning grant legislation in April, but it was held indefinitely on the House’s reading calendar, where it remains. As the House was on the brink of recessing Wednesday night, Rubel said she “felt compelled” to advocate for the grant.

“I could not sit idly by while I feel that this body is going to make one of the gravest mistakes that I’ve ever seen it make in my eight years here,” Rubel said.

Also on Wednesday, Republican Gov. Brad Little urged his social media followers to contact their representatives and request they take up SB 1193.

“A strong foundation of learning before age 5 helps our youngest Idahoans prepare for Kindergarten and a lifetime of learning,” tweeted the governor, who added a business friendly argument. “The availability of high quality care is also one of the biggest factors in ensuring a strong workforce.”

The $6 million grant is a continuation and expansion of a program that’s been coordinating early learning collaboratives around the state, which have decided on their own local priorities for enhancing early learning. Those include a kindergarten readiness push in Kuna to a business-led effort to regain lost child care capacity in Valley County to an immensely popular “Read-Talk-Play Every Day” initiative aimed at families of preschool children in American Falls.

Rubel attributed the House’s apathy toward the grant to “an ocean of misinformation.” An earlier bill that would have accepted the $6 million was voted down for fears among Republican legislators that pre-school education is “indoctrinating” children with social justice values.

SB 1193 added language to the original bill stipulating the money shall not be used to “dictate curricula for use by local collaboratives.”

“There’s nothing that is socialist indoctrination or any other kind of indoctrination about this,” Rubel said Wednesday. “This is kids learning their letters, learning their numbers, learning how to hold hands on the way to the park and stop at the red light, so that they’ll be ready to go to kindergarten and perform better for the rest of their lives.”

During a news conference Wednesday, Rep. Priscilla Giddings, R-White Bird, praised her colleagues for “pushing back” against critical race theory – which seeks to understand and address how racism and inequality influence U.S. institutions and society – in Idaho’s public schools, from preschool to higher education. The first opportunity to push back was the early education grant, Giddings said.

“They wanted federal money being given to 0 to 5 year olds to be used to teach children that by being white you are privileged; we don’t subscribe to that theory here in Idaho,” she said. “It’s going to take parents and teachers and professors to say, in Idaho, we believe in individual responsibility and we don’t believe in systemic racism.”

Regardless of the curricula restriction, and despite the fact the grant was supported by Idaho’s business community, the state’s two GOP U.S. senators, and the State Board of Education, along with participants in 15 local collaboratives around the state, the House declined to take up SB 1193. House Speaker Scott Bedke, R-Oakley, said in a news conference Thursday that SB 1193 didn’t come up because it didn’t have the votes to pass.

But the grant may not be dead.

When the Senate and House made conflicting decisions this week, to adjourn and recess, respectively, it may have left open the possibility for the Legislature to return this year. An opinion from the Idaho Attorney General’s Office suggested the Legislature may be in an extended recess, for failing to concur on adjournment, a constitutional requirement.

Meanwhile, Beth Oppenheimer, executive director of the Idaho Association for the Education of Young Children – the early childhood grant’s administrator – told Idaho EdNews that it’s unclear whether the grant required the Legislature’s approval in the first place.

The grant was placed before the Legislature “in good faith” with the expectation that it would pass, Oppenheimer told Idaho EdNews.

If all else fails, the Idaho Association for the Education of Young Children is seeking alternative funding sources to supplement the grant, Idaho EdNews reported.