Idaho Statesman endorses Quality Education Act ballot initiative
photo credit: Melanie Folwell
Idaho’s largest newspaper published an editorial this morning in support of the Quality Education Act, a ballot initiative that would increase funding for teachers, support staff, and underfunded programs ranging from the arts to career-technical courses in welding and agricultural science:
Over the next several months, you may be presented with an opportunity to sign a petition from Reclaim Idaho to put something called the Quality Education Act on the November 2022 ballot.
If you get that opportunity, you should sign the petition.
Here’s more:
Idaho continues to be 51st in the nation in per-pupil funding, and dozens of school districts around Idaho are operating on more than $200 million in supermajority voter-approved supplemental levies. Some school districts are operating on four-day school weeks.
Meanwhile, Idaho legislators continue to cut taxes that disproportionately benefit the wealthy and out-of-state corporations while starving basic government functions such as public education.
Earlier this year, Idaho Republican legislators approved a bill that cut taxes by $163 million per year and handed out $220 million in tax rebates this year.
At the same time, average teacher pay in Idaho has gone down since the Great Recession, when factoring in inflation.
While teacher salaries in Washington, Oregon and Wyoming grew by an average of 12% between the 2009–2010 and 2019–2020 school years, Idaho teacher salaries fell by 2% in the same time period, according to the Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy. Idaho’s annual teacher salaries fell from $55,000 in 2009 to $53,000 in 2019, after adjusting for inflation.
Idaho’s “go on” rate, students going on from high school to college or a career technical institution, was already low and has been dropping from 50% in 2017 to 45% in 2019, according to Idaho Ed News.
Idaho doesn’t require kindergarten and funds only half-day kindergarten if a school district offers it. In the 2021 legislative session, while legislators were chopping more than $435 million out of the budget, they failed to pass a bill that would have added $42 million to the public education budget to fund full-day kindergarten.
And the conclusion:
In the end, we see this initiative largely as a referendum on the Idaho Republican Legislature, which has failed the children of Idaho by skimping on public education funding.
If they don’t see the importance of investing in Idaho’s future, then voters will have to do it for them.
Sign up to volunteer with the signature drive here:
If you’d like to sign the petition, catch us at one of our upcoming events:
https://www.mobilize.us/reclaimidaho/
Read the full Idaho Statesman editorial here:
https://www.idahostatesman.com/opinion/editorials/article254414348.html
