Idaho budget writers cut textbooks to pay for field trips, school busing
Minutes after Idaho’s legislative budget-writing committee voted to use rainy day funds to keep the state’s early retirement program for teachers, a House committee introduced a bill that would kill the program Tuesday.
Welcome to the merry-go-round that is the Idaho Legislature.
Despite the program’s $4 million price tag and assumed savings, no one — including the state superintendent of public instruction — can say definitively how much the program costs or, as some argue, saves.
“You have to make some assumptions, and it depends on whose assumptions you follow as to whether it saves us money or costs us money,” said Tom Luna, the state superintendent.
The program gives teachers who retire early an average of an $18,000 bonus. House Education Committee Chairman Bob
Nonini, R-
Coeur d’Alene, called it a “golden parachute” for teachers.
"I have a hard time paying those people that money,"
Nonini said of teachers who decide they no longer want to be in a classroom. "Maybe they should just gracefully retire and go to the golf course."
Last year, 200 teachers took advantage of the program, hence the roughly $4 million price tag.
But some proponents claim the program actually saves money because it replaces older, more expensive teachers with younger, cheaper ones. That’s the reason the program was enacted.
The Idaho Education Association says the program has saved the state over $90 million in the last 10 years when using a three-year model. The
IEA said when you use a one-year model, the program does cost the state money.
No study has been conducted on the actual costs.
“I go back to the only hard evidence that we have (and) that’s when we eliminated it for administrators, it saved the state money,” Luna said.
The budget-writing committee also cut another $4.2 million from the state’s textbook allocation to districts in order to pay for field trip transportation and busing to school.
With the decision, the state will provide $1.7 million for textbooks, down from $9.95 million in previous years.
There was a motion to cut $2.1 million from textbooks and $2.1 million from classroom supplies, but that motion failed as the committee chose to take all of the money from textbooks.
The classroom supply allowance for teachers has been cut from $350 to $300. Some committee members worried about cutting it further.
"The classroom supplies are consumables," said Rep. Cliff Bayer, R-Boise. "It's much, much easier on the classroom to absorb this budget situation with the textbooks. It's in the best interests of our education needs in the classroom."
The state has provided nearly $20 million for textbooks in the last two years, and districts had to match $1 for every $3 in state funding for textbooks during that time, Luna said. That means nearly $27 million has been allocated to textbooks in the last two years.
Luna supported cutting the textbook money over cutting classroom supplies.
“Great strides have been made across the state in updating the textbooks," Luna told the budget committee. "Let's pause for a year, and hopefully next year we'll be talking about how we can fully fund the textbooks.”
But Luna said later that it was a bad decision to cut textbooks instead of cutting the early retirement bonus. He said all of the money comes from the same pot.
“Tell me how funding early retirement at the costs of textbooks is good for the kids," he said after the House Education Committee introduced the bill to kill the retirement incentive. "You’re going to have few textbooks in the classroom to fund early retirement. I don’t know how you defend that if you’re truly doing what you think is best for kids.”
The new money for field-trip transportation and busing to school follows concerns that the Boise School District stood to lose $1.4 million in pupil transportation funds before the decision to reinstate the funds. The district must participate in an audit to determine how the state might adjust its transportation reimbursement formula.
The budget-writing Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee approved $20,000 for the audit.
The House had stripped the $4.2 million in transportation funding and the early retirement incentive in bills earlier this session as part of cost-cutting measures. The Senate restored both in amendments. The House concurred on the amendments, but has not yet voted on the amended bills. The House voted overwhelmingly in support of the two bills as amended this afternoon.
Tuesday’s actions mean there are several competing and contradictory education bills making their way through the House and Senate.
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www.idahostatesman.comI am so upset about this! The very next thing I plan on doing after posting this is emailing my reps and Tom Luna
trluna@sde.idaho.gov One question I plan on asking is why in this time of economic
struggle are we being so wasteful. Why are we not putting children first, my kids will be running the show in a very short time. I want my children, along with all the other kids in Idaho not to be embarrassed to say they
received their education in Idaho. I am so f-
ing angry right now! We have only one
opportunity to teach our children, they have only one childhood, one chance to get it right. We can't just put it off for a year and hope some
miracle money to appear!
