Idaho Legislature - Week 5

In this episode of IEA's HOTLINE Podcast, we discuss Week 5 of the Idaho Legislature’s 2023 session. Our panel's analysis centers on the advancement of the session’s first voucher bill earlier in the week, the outlook for Gov. Brad Little’s proposals on educator pay, attempts politicize traditionally non-partisan institutions in the state and a renewed effort to censor libraries. 

Joining  today’s conversation are:

• IEA’s Political Director Chris Parri
• IEA Executive Director Paul Stark

Transcript

Mike Journee: 0:12

Welcome to Idaho education Association's hotline podcast, a weekly discussion about what's happening at the Idaho legislature around public education and the policy priorities of ies members, IEA members or public school educators from all over the state. They're Idaho's most important education experts, and they use their influence to fight for free quality and equitable public education for every student in the state. I'm Mike journee, communications director at the IEA and I'll be your host for this episode of hotline. Today we discuss week five of the Idaho legislature is 2023 session, discussion centers on the advancement of the sessions first voucher bill this week. The outlook for Governor Brad littles proposal on educator pay attempts to politicize traditionally nonpartisan institutions in the state, and a renewed effort to censored libraries. Joining me for today's conversation, our ies political director, Chris Perry, and IEA executive director Paul Stark. Hi Chris Paul, thanks for joining me. We'll talk about week five of the Idaho legislature today, guys. And it was a big week for education policy this week at the Statehouse with a voucher bill that we've been talking about so much came forward in the Idaho Senate. It was in the Senate Education Committee, Senate Bill 1038, sponsored by Tammy Nichols, from Middleton and Brian Lennie from Nampa. And it went through as we expected, it went through the Senate Education Committee pretty easily they there was two days of testimony, it was probably about a a two to one ratio of those who were against it, who testified. And the same ratio voted for it. On the when the committee voted six to three out of vote. And so now the bill is headed to the Senate for Chris and, you know, luckily, this is where every Idaho senator is going to have to stand to be counted about whether or not they support public education. Right?

Chris Parri: 2:06

Yeah, I mean, we've long talked about how the current makeup of the Senate Education Committee isn't very representative of even the Senate itself and let alone Idahoans in general. So we knew pretty far ahead ahead of time that we would probably get a six three vote on this voucher bill. And that's how it ended up. But what we don't think I necessarily planned for was just how excellent the testimony was for our team. It was incredible. And like you mentioned two to one, for sure. We outnumbered them, as you would expect. And man just extremely like professional, great testimony and clear and concise. And I'm a big fan of when people leave a little bit of time on the board. They were timing it at two minutes.

Mike Journee: 2:53

And one minute toward the end of the day. I mean, they're really cutting down really trying to

Chris Parri: 2:57

get get it out there and get the vote done. But yeah, I loved it. It was very concise and direct. And we heard from folks all over the state and with all sorts of different positions on other things. But United on this front for sure.

Mike Journee: 3:11

Yeah, one of my favorite things that came out of the pandemic is this remote testimony that they're allowed to do that they can do now through video. It's really great. But I thought it was cool. Yeah. Paul, you testified on behalf of the the association and our members in that and how did you feel like the deliberation went and whatever, you know, we're doing a little bit of outreach to members to get folks to stand up and be counted and be heard with senators as it goes to the floor. Any any insights about where we think this might go on the on the House floor on the Senate floor?

Paul Stark: 3:48

You know, I don't know, it could go any number of directions. But what I do know is I've read through the bill very carefully. And there are like so many problems with this bill, like immense number of issues. I testified, again, limited to two minutes, I testified on the biggest, which I think is the accountability issue, the lack of accountability. And that's the thing is this money will flow to all kinds of private schools that have no reporting requirements. Someone told me the other day, you know, as a teacher, I could, I could hold school in my garage. If I get 10 students, I'm making more money than I am now. And I could only you know, I would only teach two hours a day and I could, you know, teach whatever I want. Without any testing without and technically, you would qualify under this bill for you know, 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of dollars.

Mike Journee: 4:40

I hadn't thought about that. That's absolutely true, isn't it?

Paul Stark: 4:42

Yeah, like a teacher could just quit and say I'm teaching a pod. Our listeners shouldn't should you on mute during this point, but no, I'm just kidding. But a

Chris Parri: 4:51

micro school,

Paul Stark: 4:52

you could teach a micro so you can make something up you can make whatever Yep. And, and there's no curriculum either. There's no school board that's accountable for it. Anybody you know, and you could teach anything from a far right fascist doctrine to, you know, totally the far left doctrine, you know, you could, you could literally indoctrinate students on the taxpayer dime, it's, it's crazy. And that's just one aspect of it. Oh my gosh, there's so many other things that this bill has problems, and I'd be happy to talk to anybody about it

Mike Journee: 5:23

And I'm going to play a clip here from from Senator Dave Lent, the chairman of the committee here in this minute is pretty lengthy, but but one of the things that I noticed from the testimony from those who were coming before were to testify, there were a lot of people who, who do homeschool and and and it seemed to me like that choice, they were looking for some financing of that choice in their home. And there was also a lot of discussion about from small business owners who seemed to be interested in the in the in the free market aspect of this and how there's an opportunity there to make money off of this. I mean, there were some folks who testified specifically about that and said some of those things out loud, it was kind of shocking too.

Paul Stark: 6:07

One of the one of the hidden things in that bill is these administrative fees. And they said it's going to be 4% in the first two years, and then we'll go down to 2%, or something like that. Or no, it's three, and then it goes down to two. But in the first two years, the state taxpayers would be paying $600,000 a year just to administer this program. That's some private company, who's going to make over a half a million dollars a year. And then just to administer this program, if you don't think there's profiteering under this, this bill, you're fooling yourself.

Mike Journee: 6:40

I want to play a clip from from Chairman of the Senate Education Committee who voted who was one of the three who voted against this legislation. It's a very lengthy clip, but it really kind of sums up his thoughts about this legislation. And so let's listen to what Senator daveland has to say.

Sen. Dave Lent: 6:56

And as I look around the country, I look at Wisconsin, Arizona, Ohio and Indiana. And as you look down the road, four or five years, you see hundreds of millions of dollars going into the process. And the good senator from District One, Senator Herndon, I loved his pie description. And if I could steal it for a second, basically, we ended up paying for device. And I think that's where the money comes in. And that's what we need to be aware of accountability is interesting, we're using accountability to judge our current system. But yet, what we're proposing to go to has no accountability, we will not know how those students do, we will send the money out as a representative of my constituents, I cannot in good faith, send money out with no accountability, that would cause me not to be a good steward of the precious tax dollars, that those people in my district are paying. I see if we have a success through here, it's going to include some level of accountability. We look across the country of Ohio and other states. They have built that in there probably is an Idaho solution here. But I think it with respect to the sponsors. This is probably too much too fast.

Mike Journee: 8:14

So he that really summed up his perspective. And I think that's probably the perspective a lot of folks Chris, going into the onto the floor vote here. We know, we've heard a lot of folks expressed similar concerns about this. You know, unfortunately, it sounds like the senator isn't completely opposed to the idea of vouchers if there's some accountability attached to it, but I think he's pretty thoughtful about about things and wants to make sure we do right. We're going and this is gonna be a close vote on this on the Senate floor, isn't it?

Chris Parri: 8:43

Yeah, I think it's gonna be a dead heat, very narrow, whichever direction it goes. The thing I liked about what Senator Allen had to say was that it if there was anything good that came out of this discussion about quote, unquote, school choice, and ESA isn't vouchers and stuff this year, is the attention that it's pulled to the public framework that we already have for school choice, or options, or whatever you want to call it, and Idaho that does have accountability already. And I think that a lot of folks, you know, me as well, coming into this conversation, I wasn't aware of all of the school public school options that the state provides here. And it's been great to learn more about those. And I hope also that people around the state are doing the same thing and taking stock of the choices we already have. Because for all of the good options that the state currently has and can support. It's only as good as people know about it. Right. So I think what daveland is kind of saying there as well, Senator Linda's saying there is that accountability has to come with this. And when public money goes somewhere, taxpayers are entitled to that accountability. So you

Paul Stark: 9:50

know, I can if I can jump in to you know, it's interesting going on that notion, because everybody's talking about this is, you know, choice and parental choice and we need more choice. But interestingly in this bill doesn't actually add any new choice. All the choices that are contemplated in this bill exists today. Right now, what we're talking about is who pays for the choice and which I've said before. And that's all that we're talking about. Someone aptly said, this is a funding bill. This isn't a school choice, Bill.

Mike Journee: 10:21

So let's go back to the screen, I can talk a little bit about what's coming the vote, we're working really hard to turn out members to get them to email lawmakers, and to let them know what they feel about this right. We feel like we've got about a half a dozen swing votes, probably the play with within with the Senate. So we're really focusing on on those folks, and making sure that they hear from our members about this record.

Chris Parri: 10:46

Yeah, I think there, there's, like you said, a handful of votes that folks that support school choice in and, you know, in the broad sense, but also are troubled by the accountability stuff, and troubled by a lot of the same things that Senator lint mentioned in his debate there. So yeah, I think we have a really good shot of if our educators are able to get in touch with our senators and have a good conversation about them. This is not even if you support school choice, this is not the version that you want to see come to fruition in Idaho, it is copy and paste from all these other states doesn't fix any of the policy failures we've seen in those states. Like Senator Lynch said, there's a way of doing this in Idaho, and we've maybe we are already doing is probably my perspective on it. Yeah, yeah.

Mike Journee: 11:31

So I guess I want to do a little disclaimer, disclaimer here, too. For our listeners, we know we're going to be talking a lot a lot today about some of the a lot of the bad for education, things that are in front of the legislature right now. And I guess we should put a little context around that this is the time of year, when all of the early bills that come from a variety of corners of the legislature, that that always might, these are the ones where they start getting to full hearings, they start making headlines, people start paying attention to them, we want to make sure that we that we put that into context, that these are things that are going to be kind of dominated in session, this middle part. And we're gonna move in toward the the budget discussions later on to where it's really the rubber meets the road as far as education policy goes. Right. So I just wanted to put that out there before we keep going. The next one I wanted to talk about the next legislation I want to talk about was the Idaho launch scholarship. This was a cornerstone of the governor's lineup for the for the study of the state this year, his legislative priorities in this bill, it's it provides a $500 to attend any in State University Community College Technical College or workforce training program, after folks graduate from high school, after students graduate from high school, so it's, but I wanted to talk about it a little bit in the context of the debate that's gone on around it, and how that might play out for another part of the governor's legislative priorities. And that's the the the teacher pay proposals that he made coming forward. And so, you know, there's been a lot of drama, it seems like this could kind of be a harbinger for for the kinds of debates we're going to see. And the kind of conversation you're gonna see around that teacher paid discussion. Right, Chris?

Chris Parri: 13:21

I think there's a potential for it, for sure. I think still teacher pay remains, I think one of the most politically popular aspects of the entire of the governor's agenda. So it might be a little different there. But I think something to keep in mind, particularly for members with the launch scholarships is that teachers are in in demand career that could be helped with the scholarship funds as well. So the, you know, the scholarships will go to folks, and the state will decide which careers are in demand, nursing, teaching, a lot of CTE stuff, so welding and things like that, as well. So I think that's important as if educators are willing to get involved on this one. We can get behind this as well, the as it pertains to the teacher pay debate, I do think that, that it's been a little bit of a surprise to see this launch program have such a difficult time making it through the house, it only got one vote, it was uh, it got through the house with one, one extra vote, basically had that vote turned, it would have failed in the house. So in the Senate, they're anticipating extremely close again. And a lot of the same swing folks that we need to get in touch with on vouchers are the same folks that are a little bit wavering, perhaps on the on the launch program. So it'll be interesting to see where this goes. I do hope that there's more political oomph behind the teacher pay. So we can get that through a little easier, easier hope but yeah, it isn't. It isn't a good sign necessarily for the Governor's priorities that his first big legislative push is hitting so many roadblocks, I

Paul Stark: 14:57

think, and I think this is just a emphasize doesn't, Chris that how important elections are, you know, and if anybody doubts this, you know, this, the current situation we find ourselves in, just demonstrates elections matter, every vote matters. And, you know, we saw, you know, Representative Sims, for example, lose his seat with just a handful of votes. And so, you know, getting involved on that election side of it will, in turn, produce better results in the legislative side of it big time.

Mike Journee: 15:28

So I wanted to spend a few minutes talking about this kind of this thing that we're starting to see around a number of bills, and discussions that are happening in the legislature right now around introducing more partisanship in some of the things that have traditionally been nonpartisan institutions. In our state, we have a new bill that would overhaul school trustee elections, which have traditionally been nonpartisan. And it it, it does a number of things. But one of the main things it does is it requires folks to declare party affiliation, or an unaffiliated status in doing this, there's a similar bill around city council seats, that's happening. And then we also have this conversation around the joint legislative oversight committee, which is a bipartisan commission that oversaw the office of performance evaluations in this state, which was basically they're the the local equivalent of the OMB and at the congressional level, for in favor of a committee dominated by the majority, which is in Idaho, the Republican Party, of course, for now, for and so and so the all of these things show to me, a real concerted effort to bring forward legislation and to push things into a corner. That's much more dominated by a single political party as opposed to things that are based upon good government and good decisions and unbiased data and those kinds of things. Guys, are you seeing the same kind of thing.

Chris Parri: 17:14

So the in the reason I said for now is because these kinds of pushes, particularly when you get to, like legislative whistleblower groups, like like the Legislative Council, that you mentioned, the, it always seems attractive when it's your party and the majority to start rolling black or like to start injecting more partisanship because you obviously are dominating the legislature. But it wasn't that long ago that Democrats were in control of the legislature in Idaho, or had the governor's seat or something else. So the tides can turn pretty quick. And I think if the tides were to turn, you'd have the Republicans asking for a bipartisan whistleblower committee as they should, like we should have bipartisanship. Where needed and nonpartisan ship should be the default, in my opinion,

Paul Stark: 17:59

you know, when, when has ever a one party system really benefited the people that they, you know, like never so red flag, you know, and that's where good policy is made when you have diverse ideas and diverse viewpoints, and allow things to follow the process, of course, but a one party rules all never ever has ever in history resulted in a really good result.

Chris Parri: 18:24

And I do think so I think if if you were to talk to folks who support the idea of making the municipal elections, political and the or partisan, and the school board elections partisan as well, I think they might say that it's more transparent, because you know, you have a person now declaring their affiliation with a party. The problem I have with those bills is that the, it is empowering the parties, because this is a two way street. Yes, the voter will see the AR the D next to a person's name and can make assumptions based on that if they'd like. But the party is also then empowered to further get involved in these local and municipal elections. And party officials are not elected by the general public, they are not accountable to the general public. And I think, you know, most people see independent thinking as a real value. So the idea of us boiling down really complex conversations at the local and school board level, into these kind of myopic partisan ones, like really bums me out, honestly, I've worked on a lot of these elections, and it's never good when you start getting into well, you're Democrat and you're Republican, or you're a socialist and you're a fascist or whatever. It's not it never is beneficial.

Mike Journee: 19:40

And it brings all the baggage of the national political debates into into the conversations about our schools into the conversations about our local municipal governments in ways that just wouldn't be there otherwise. Right. And I think it also I think it does one more thing, I think it I think it also marginalizes some One who wants to run for one of these offices to do good work for their community or do good work for their local schools? And puts them at a disadvantage against someone who might have the backing of the party machine. Right, exactly.

Chris Parri: 20:14

Yeah. I mean, there's no consolidated independent party of Idaho, you know, for the folks that don't fit nicely into the party platforms of the Democrats or the Republicans to get behind them and support them in the school board elections or stuff like that, like, you are going up against these behemoths. If you are just an independent voter or independent candidate,

Mike Journee: 20:34

and we're seeing that kind of involvement already. You know, even even without this, the lack of a partisan tag on on these, these legislators were starting to recede all over the place.

Paul Stark: 20:46

So yeah, there's the attitude of conform or be cast out. And that's your only alternatives. Yeah.

Mike Journee: 20:54

So I in a similar vein, I want to talk a little bit about libraries, we're starting to see some some things around libraries again, this year, of course, last year, we had the one bill that would criminalize librarians. If if someone if a kid got ahold of inappropriate materials in their in their library and that kind of thing, we still, we've got another bill coming out targeting library private pornography, which made its debut on Monday. I don't know of any librarian around who would who would willingly allow some kind of inappropriate materials to be out there for kids to get hold of.

Chris Parri: 21:33

There's a false assumption here that this bill seems to point out that, you know, librarians have nefarious intents, when they distribute or manage the information in their buildings like that it is not true. I think our librarians in the state of Ohio do a great job. And I've talked to the Library Association and about this issue, and they're getting activated on it, as well. One of the things that freaks me out a lot about this is the threat of library districts losing their insurance, as well, their liability insurance and stuff, because at that point, you're recruiting insurance companies into this, this whole issue. And good point it. It really freaks me out to have folks that are completely unaccountable to Idaho, to Idaho ones kind of pushing this as well, or to or getting involved potentially, based in this in this kind of wild debate.

Mike Journee: 22:25

And this isn't the only thing that's happening right now, Paul, we are seeing this debate going on in other ways. Kuna School District put 25 books under review after after some some legislators said that they should, and that's comes on the heels of Nampa School District doing the same thing last year. And then we can this week, I don't know if you guys saw this headline or not Canyon county commissioners received a petition to dissolve the Meridian Library District claiming the district libraries contains sexually explicit materials available to children. So there's an across the board attack here that's happening. And it seems it sounds very familiar given a lot of the conversations that we're having in the legislature about the conversations that we see happening in school districts and school board meetings and elsewhere, around the Statehouse,

Paul Stark: 23:09

You know, no one is in favor of something pornographic being in libraries. No one wants children to be exposed to things above their age. And I don't think anybody would disagree with that statement. But what we see is censorship. And that's really the slippery slope, you open that censorship door, and where does it lead to next? You know, let's not have any books that discuss we have a two party system in the United States. You know, I mean, at what point do we stop what we subjectively find objectionable?

Mike Journee: 23:39

And who defines what's objectionable?

Chris Parri: 23:41

That's right.

Paul Stark: 23:42

There's a legal precedent under the 14th Amendment called the void for vagueness doctrine that would kick in here as well, in some of these laws, but, you know, every trustee kind of or library counsel or whatever, it may be that governing body, you know, I encourage them to review books. Yes, you should do that. I mean, that should be part of what you do. But what I'm afraid of is this, the the mob mentality that exists that says, now you have to start censoring thing that we the mob find objectionable, and if it if it is, you know, objectionable and it's not age appropriate, yes, take whatever measures you need to, but but there's processes for that there are processes, I'm just more afraid of what doors are we opening, you know, and it wasn't, whatever, whatever it was, like, seven years ago or something, you know, we saw in Germany book burning parties and things like this. And this, this, this mob mentality can swing in very radical ways that are very counter to the very things America was set up to protect, you know, from our founding fathers, the freedom of the press, and the lack of censorship was vital to America's foundations. And it's embodied of course in the First Amendment.

Chris Parri: 24:56

It's it's really funny to me too, because like the books that have caused stuff or quote unquote caused such an uproar are things like The Kite Runner like in Toni Morrison's books like, these are not like fantastic graphic, obscene books. These are pretty wonderful books actually, that, you know, some group, some tiny group of extremely loud people with a lot of time on their hands are compelled to take big action on and can threaten a bunch of political action. And like I said, get the, you know, liability, kind of conversation going and all this other stuff. This bill gives those folks tons more power to bring to fruition their version of censorship. And it's pretty gross, I move it makes me mad.

Mike Journee: 25:43

And it's likely that our members who are librarians are going to bear the brunt of this. I mean, that's one of the reasons I want to talk about this. This really impacts school librarians, school libraries, and the ability of, of them to be able to do their job without the fear of of being arrested, right?

Paul Stark: 26:01

Isn't it strange how the current political mob mentality has vilified some of the most revered individuals and communities like librarians, like teachers, you know, that historically have have held a really high place. And then this propaganda machine has now discredited these good people, they're still the same good people that they were in the 70s. And the 40s. They're the same good people, same good natures. And yet, these most important parts are now vilified, and somehow tried to put into such a bad light. Librarians are good people. And if anybody doubts that, go talk to your librarian and find out

Chris Parri: 26:41

or Paul, I could set up my micro library and get perhaps voucher tax money,

Paul Stark: 26:47

the micro library, the School of micro librarians, yes.

Mike Journee: 26:52

So in in the interest of trying to end on somewhat of a high note, right. We've been talking about a lot of a lot of disheartening things that are happening right now. But I'm so I wanted to we did we did get worried this week, that legislation last year, around dyslexia. There was a really solid appropriation that went toward that this week, $1.5 million went into that. And this is for, for continuing education, for professional development for educators who want to know more about how to teach dyslexic kids is about providing money for materials and programs for that for dyslexic kids in school. So that's something our members really cared about last year, they were really supportive of this legislation, I think they're going to be really happy to hear about this, this bill going forward. And, it being funded.

Chris Parri: 27:45

Totally, the no good deed goes unpunished. So there was a problem last year with the rollout of some of this dyslexia work, after the legislature passed, passed it. And this is an attempt to help remedy that and get school districts and educators and everybody running on the same wavelength so that we can actually start delivering these, these great services, I think, to kids who need it.

Paul Stark: 28:08

It's a long time coming. Yeah, definitely for dyslexia, especially any parent of anyone with dyslexia. And this is a long, long time coming, and we're glad to see it here. And I should also say that the IEA is going to be providing professional development on dyslexia to meet those requirements under the statute for educators. And as always the IPAs, professional development will be top class.

Mike Journee: 28:33

One more positive note, I wanted to kind of touch on something you mentioned in a staff briefing earlier this morning, Chris, about we already talked about the educator salary stuff is a very popular thing. But in particular, you mentioned today in our staff meeting that, that there is the pay for educational support professionals, those folks who are bus drivers, who are our front desk, staff, members, counselors and other folks, education support staff, the pay proposal for the governor there that still seems like it's got a whole lot of support behind it. And I know our members are gonna be really pleased about that, because they've heard, we've heard a lot from them about how important it is that they have partners in the building, helping with all these other things that go on outside of their classroom in addition to, to inside.

Chris Parri: 29:25

So, my sense is that there's a lot a lot of momentum behind the classified classified Pat, that staff pay. And that is it's really encouraging. People might play games with the teacher pay, and we'll be pushing really hard to get that through because those are probably going to be two separate appropriations bills. It's possible. It's still kind of we're still waiting to see how this kind of filters out and whether or not there's legislation attached or different budgetary items or something like that. But the word on the street so to speak in the legislature is that people are lining up to support the classified staff increases as the school district's desperately needs. That's really good news. Fingers crossed. I'll keep everyone posted on on how those conversations develop, because we're still pretty early on it. But

Mike Journee: 30:11

yeah. Alright guys, thanks again for joining me today for the hotline podcast and, and this good conversation. Again, I want to want to underline that there's probably some really good news coming down the road. These are..this is the time of year when we start dealing with all the ridiculousness that comes out of certain corners of the legislature. And that makes a lot of headlines usually. And so, just want to sum that up good before we before we sign off, but, but thanks again for the conversation.

Paul Stark: 30:40

Thanks, Mike.

Chris Parri: 30:41

Awesome. Thanks, Mike.

Mike Journee: 30:44

Thank you for listening to Idaho education Association's hotline podcast, and this discussion about week five of the 2023 Idaho legislature. Thanks as well to my colleagues, Chris Perry and Paul Stark for joining me. Please watch for future updates about new episodes on IEA social media channels, or sign up for email updates on our website at Idaho eaa.org. I'm Mike journee. And as always, I hope you join me in thanking Idaho's public school educators for everything they do for our State students, families and public schools.