[Vision2020] What a concept - Idaho schools need money

[Tom Hansen]

Courtesy of today's (August 26, 2013) Lewiston Tribune.

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What a concept - Idaho schools need money

Marty Trilhasse

Ever since Idahoans elected him to guide their public school system, Superintendent Tom Luna has refused to talk about the elephant in the room.

That would be, ahem, money.

As in the lack of it.

He's been willing to talk about anything and everything else.

Test scores.

Standards.

Accountability.

Technology in the classroom.

Gutting teacher collective bargaining rights.

Merit pay for teachers.

But as Idaho lawmakers - under the protective cover of a national recession - whacked away at school budgets, there was hardly a whimper. Even today, five years after the economy collapsed, the state spends $110 million less on its public schools.

No protest at all about Idaho's perennial 50th place -out of 51 including Washington, D.C. - in per-pupil expenditures. At $6,824, Idaho is 35.4 percent below the national average and only Utah spends less.

Did you hear Luna respond to the new Education Week rankings - which give Idaho the nation's lowest marks on school finance? Idaho's score - 61.2 - was more than 10 points behind Washington and nearly 15 points below the national average.

Didn't think so.

Of course, there's been silence from the superintendent's office as former Idaho Chief Economist Mike Ferguson documented the Legislature's retreat from its constitutional duty to pay for schools. Since the start of the century, the share of Idaho's personal income devoted to public education has dropped more than 20 percent - or about $500 million a year - while taxes for the well-to-do and politically influential have been cut.

When voters rejected Luna's school overhaul package last fall, he lost control of the education agenda. Gov. C.L. (Butch) Otter put that in the hands of a 31-member task force.

Friday, that panel plainly repudiated six years of Lunaism. It said the school system needs more money:

$82.5 million just to restore cuts in the discretionary accounts schools use to pay the bills - from lights to textbooks. Five years ago, they got the equivalent of $25,696 per classroom; now it's down to $20,000. And some districts have run out of wiggle room. Without more dollars - either from the state or voter-approved supplemental property tax increases - staffs will be cut and more students will be crowded into fewer classrooms.
$253.8 million for teacher pay. That's what it would cost to bring starting salaries up to $40,000 and pay senior teachers as much as $60,000. Eye-popping, maybe. But that's what it's going to take to attract and retain quality teachers to a state that has demonstrated a marked hostility toward their profession. As the Idaho Legislature's Office of Performance Evaluations reported earlier this year, Idaho suffers from "a strong undercurrent of despair among teachers who seem to perceive a climate that disparages their efforts and belittles their contributions. The vast majority ... express concerns or dissatisfaction with certain aspects of their work or, more broadly, with conditions surrounding the public education environment in Idaho. ... The general tone of dissatisfaction and sense of being unappreciated may ... directly affect the state's ability to ensure a steady supply of dedicated, highly effective teachers in all of Idaho's public schools."
Not all that long ago, state superintendents such as Jerry Evans or Marilyn Howard pointed out the shortcomings in school spending. So did State Board of Education members such as Janet Hay of Nampa or Mike Mitchell of Lewiston. Not to mention education supporters in the Legislature, such as former Sens. John Hansen, R-Idaho Falls, or Laird Noh, R-Kimberly.

Idahoans were told forthrightly what it would cost them to provide their children with a sound education. Whether Idahoans chose to follow this advice was up to them. At least, they were informed.

Now that message - long bottled up by Luna and his lieutenants - is front and center again, thanks to a task force willing to confront it.

There's just one problem.

To sell it, they'll need an education advocate at the state level.

And at the moment, Idaho doesn't have one. - M.T.


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Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .

"Moscow Cares" (the most fun you can have with your pants on)
http://www.MoscowCares.com
  
Tom Hansen
Moscow, Idaho

"There's room at the top they are telling you still 
But first you must learn how to smile as you kill 
If you want to be like the folks on the hill."

- John Lennon
 

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