When it comes to education, the Idaho legislature has one job, and they’re failing

By Mike Weland

In an era where fake crises abound and attacks on such integral facets of our existence as schools and libraries are rampant, Boundary County has been pushed against a wall. If we’re to save those things we consider essential to our community, county voters must push back, starting Tuesday, May 20, with a YES vote on the School District 101 Maintenance and Operations Levy.

That will keep our county’s public schools limping along as our community’s effort to convince state legislators to do the right thing for public schools, led by Superintendent Jan Bayer, a product of BCSD 101 and whose twins are Badgers now in college, and school board co-chair and West Point graduate Teresa Rae, whose daughters have excelled at Bonners Ferry High School and are in or preparing to capitalize on a good and solid foundation laid exquisitely by a good and solid public school system.

In recent years, the Best Small Library in the United States has been wrongly maligned and diminished and a public school system that has done so much with so little for so long stands on the verge of having to do much with far less, even as the legislature continues to shirk its constitutionally-mandated duty to fund public schools and instead chooses to pander to the “parental choice” movement and reduce further the educational funds vital to the only educational program they have a mandate to support — public education.

I say having to do much with far less because even if Boundary County voters, fickle bunch that we are, choose to vote down the M&O, which the district has relied on for years to pay for those things that go beyond books and tests, the essential extras; sports, robotics, DYW, choir, band, art and more, teachers, parents and residents will dig deep and make unfair sacrifice to uphold for our public school students that which those bent on special and unmerited privilege demand.

“The stability of a republican form of government depending mainly upon the intelligence of the people, it shall be the duty of the legislature of Idaho, to establish and maintain a general, uniform and thorough system of public, free common schools,” Article IX of Idaho’s constitution reads.

And still the Idaho legislature passes and Governor Brad Little signs House Bill 93, which creates a $50 million tax credit program to fund private school expenses, to include religious schools, contrary to Section 5 of Article 9: “Neither the legislature nor any county, city, town, township, school district, or other public corporation, shall ever make any appropriation, or pay from any public fund or moneys whatever, anything in aid of any church or sectarian or religious society, or for any sectarian or religious purpose, or to help support or sustain any school, academy, seminary, college, university or other literary or scientific institution, controlled by any church, sectarian or religious denomination whatsoever; nor shall any grant or donation of land, money or other personal property ever be made by the state, or any such public corporation, to any church or for any sectarian or religious purpose.”

The push for Idaho to fund other than public education and call it “parental choice” is very little more than a ploy to bleed the public school system dry.

You hear the arguments and they sound reasonable, “public schools are failing and doing a disservice to our children.”

I beg to differ. Public schools aren’t failing, nor are they doing a disservice to our students. The legislature is failing our public schools and it’s our senators and representatives who are letting our youth down, shifting the burden of their responsibility onto the communities that already support their public schools and students in myriad ways.

The legislature is asking the taxpayers in communities of diverse economic means to provide “a general, uniform and thorough system of public, free common schools.” It can’t be done.

There is no way Boundary County, still sending its kids to a school built around 80 years ago with discount materials salvaged from Farragut Naval Station, can compete with Boise or other urban areas of Idaho, we simply don’t have the population nor the land base.

The Idaho Constitution does not mandate that the legislature fund all forms of education a parent may want and it prohibits funding religious education altogether. It mandates but one choice for parents, a free public education, not concerned all that much with what a parent wants for the child, but with what best serves the community, the public, as determined by a school board elected by the community and doing a difficult job without recompense — the finest example of public service (along with library board members) there is.

And while perhaps not for everybody, go into any diner in any city or town in Idaho or even the nation and ask how the school is doing without specifying which one you’re referring to. I’ll bet nine out of ten who answer will talk about the local public high school, how “our” teams are doing this year, how “our” kids did in the math tournament, how many of  “our” kids earned dean’s list honors or degrees from demanding colleges.

Why, right here in Bonners Ferry not all that long ago a student left for college and came back our school superintendent!

Public schools are not a last resort for parents too poor to afford their educational choice for their kids. They are not hotbeds of wokism or indoctrination. They are the pride of their communities, the common link that ties together neighbors and friends across years and miles. They are the heart of our communities, and they deserve our support no matter the choice a parent makes for their children, no matter if you have no children.

And so we’re in a conundrum. The Idaho legislature has shirked its duty to develop a formula by which to allocate the funding it is obligated to provide for a general, uniform and thorough system of public, free common schools, their sole obligation as regards education.

To ensure that students in Bonners Ferry are as comfortable in their classrooms as kids in Boise, legislators are obligated to see that each have the same student-to-teacher ratios, similar access to civic and extracurricular activities, the same quality books and learning materials. The same standards of building maintenance, upgrade and replacement such that no child in any public school facility has to practice penmanship wearing mittens and wiping the steam from her fogged-up, ice-rimed glasses.

And until they quit making inane excuses and squandering the limited funding they have available for education in order to win points with loud but radical factions, all we Badger, Spartan, Wampus Cat and Bulldog fans and alumni, Tigers, Hawks, Lumberjacks and Wildcats et al can do is keep doing their job for them, reaching into our own pockets to ante up to keep our schools limping along, mittened hands practicing penmanship behind fogged glasses, in hopes that our champions, Jan Bayer, Teresa Rae and all who will join and support them, convince the legislators we send to Boise to fully live up to their obligation to public schools before spending money pandering to those who don’t understand the concept of “choice” or “community.”