Most at Lewiston town hall oppose Idaho school voucher program

Most of the crowd at the Save Our Schools Idaho town hall Tuesday evening in the Lewiston High School auditorium opposed Idaho’s new $50 million a year school voucher program.

That was apparent when roughly 80% of the audience — some 130 people — gave a standing ovation to the one Idaho lawmaker in attendance, Rep. Lori McCann, R-Lewiston.

McCann was the only one of six area legislators representing Districts 6 and 7 to oppose HB 93 this year. The bill authorized using public dollars to pay for private and religious schools.

School voucher advocates have pledged to push the initial $50 million to more than $300 million a year, warned Lindsey Smith, a Sacajawea Middle School teacher. That means “chronically underfunded” public schools will suffer as legislators fund private schools instead of addressing needs such as special education and infrastructure. A decline in quality would be inevitable.

“Education should not be a privilege for a few, but a right for all,” Smith said.

Smith was one of three panelists, joined by Lewiston School District Superintendent Tim Sperber and Moscow Charter School board member Leslie Baker. The moderator was Alexis Morgan, of Boise, who is a petitioner in a lawsuit asking Idaho’s Supreme Court to declare the new private school voucher system to be unconstitutional.

The town hall will meet at 6:30 tonight at the 1912 Center in Moscow. It then moves to the Grangeville Senior Center at 6:30 p.m. Thursday.

Panelists fielded about 10 audience questions, mostly from people associated with the public school system. They worried about negative impacts on public schools should the school voucher program expand. No proponents for the school voucher system stood to ask questions.

Evangeline Hull, who has had children in Lewiston schools, told the panel that leaders aren’t listening to their constituents and that prospects for kids in public schools are diminishing: “Everything is coming down, it seems like, like a thunderstorm.”

The not-listening became a theme of the evening.

For instance, Gov. Brad Little chose to sign the bill despite 32,000 out of 37,000 phone callers asking him to veto the bill, according to previous Lewiston Tribune reporting. The calls came in the weekend before Little signed the bill, Morgan said. And the governor had asked people to call his office with their preference, answering a yes or no question on a message system.

Seventeen-year-old LHS senior Jerrick Edwardsen asked what he could do.

“Be a voter,” Sperber advised. “Encourage your friends to vote and be educated voters.”

Morgan encouraged people to work in the May primary election, and to vote to elect pro-public education legislators.

She also reminded the crowd who voted for the school voucher program: from District 6, Sen. Dan Foreman and Rep. Brandon Mitchell favored the bill; from District 7, Sen. Cindy Carlson, Rep. Kyle Harris and Rep. Charles Shepherd voted for the bill.