Legislative Updates and Idaho Career Ladder Changes

In this episode, we discuss the expiration of the Idaho Educator Career Ladder, the funding framework the Idaho Legislature has used for 10 years to provide predictable funding and raises to educators in Idaho. We’ll talk with IEA Region Director Jason McKinley, who works in IEA’s Region 2 in the Lewiston-Moscow area, and IEA Associate Director Matt Compton about what challenges these changes to may mean for educator contract negotiations and teacher pay. 

Transcript

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Mike Journee: 0:00

I welcome to the IAEA reporter podcast, a regular discussion about the news and events important to Idaho Education Association members and those who value public education, IAEA members are public school educators from all over the state and members of the largest union in Idaho. They're Idaho's most important education experts, and they use their influence to fight for a free, quality and equitable public education for every student in the state. I'm Mike Journee, communications director at DIA and I'll be your host for this episode. Today, we'll discuss the expiration of the Idaho educator career ladder, the funding framework the Idaho legislature has used for 10 years to provide predictable funding and raises to educators in Idaho. We'll talk with IEA region director Jason McKinley, who works in ieas region two, in the Lewiston Moscow area, and IA Associate Executive Director Matt Compton about what challenges these changes may mean for Educator contract negotiations and teacher pay. But first a quick summary of what happened this week during the 2025 Idaho legislature with IaaS political director Chris Perry. Chris Perry, thank you for joining us for this quick roundup of the week at the legislature. You know, it's things are starting to pick up a little bit. The pace is picking up. We're seeing more bills and the education committees come through. But before we talk about legislation, I wanted to talk about the 2025, lobby day that we had earlier this week, and every 200 members from around the state, came to Idaho or came to Boise and and lobbied the legislature, talked to legislature about about things that are important, things that are on their minds. It's always a great opportunity to really get into the space of this legislature and let people know what's going on in

Chris Parri: 1:58

classroom. Yeah, it was, I think it was a huge success this year. It was a lot of fun. We had a panel for the first time, I think at least since I've worked here. It was Quinn Perry from the Out of School Boards Association, Paula Keller from Idaho business for education, and Heather Williams from the Idaho Rural Schools Association. And then our guest keynote speaker also joined the panel, and that was former representative Joel John from Arizona. He cast one of the key votes in favor of their universal ESA program down there. And to quote him, if there was one vote he could take back, it would be that one. So it was a pretty cool group of people. Definitely a lot of anti voucher vibes in the room for the dinner for sure. Then the following day, got up bright and early, and a bunch of our educators walked over the building and had meetings throughout the day. And all of the feedback I've gotten this week from legislators I've been meeting with has been pretty stellar, that teachers were pretty focused on students, which is, I think, a smart, smart way to approach the funding problems that we see that the legislature is responsible for, and pointing out the actual impacts it has on students. So all in all, just really rad. They did such a good job. I'm so happy that day happened, because I think everybody in the building needed some grounding in reality, and our teachers always do that.

Mike Journee: 3:19

Yeah, Joel, John was a really great counterpoint to all this stuff we've been hearing about how great the voucher bill in Arizona is. It's being held up as a model all across the country, not just here, but here as well as the model legislation. It's the legislation everybody wants to get to who wants vouchers. And he really showed that this is the terrible ideas at poor Arizona. Their budget deficits are exploding as a result of it, and it's Once that initial modest voucher gets passed, it shows how quickly those things mushroom and become giant programs and separate school programs from the public schools system. So he was really great counterpoint to that messaging. And then, of course, another key part of Lobby Day. This year, we held a press conference in the middle of Lobby Day calling on lawmakers to reject vouchers. What was so interesting about this press conference was we had representatives of the Idaho School Board Association. We had representatives of the Idaho School Administrators Association, and, of course, representatives from the Idaho Education Association, the teachers union, standing in unity against voucher schemes and telling lawmakers This is bad. They talked about the impacts on rural schools. They talked about the lack of accountability that vouchers often have for how that money is spent and how those tax dollars spent. And then, of course, one of our members, Melissa Farrow, did a great job of talking about, what are we missing out on by not fully funding our public schools and instead creating this separate school system with vouchers? So it was a really great event, really well attended by the media. Lots of coverage. Page, and I'll just put this quick plug in before we talk about this. The folks can go to Idaho, ea.org, backslash reporter, and read about all of these events that happened this week. We got lots of coverage that are going to be in our newsletter this week. But it was really great event. I thought, Chris, don't you?

Unknown: 5:15

Yeah, that was awesome. It was great to see. And you know, all the teachers and folks waving signs and stuff behind the speakers. I think was really cool. The speakers just did an amazing job. Like that. Really got me fired up and energized me in a week that, as we'll talk about, I definitely needed a little bit of energy for. But yeah, it was really great to see it.

Mike Journee: 5:33

So lava day was great. Part of the focus of the press conference was we knew two voucher bills were tending to be introduced this week in the legislature. And of course, that did happen on Wednesday to kind of we're going to call them competing voucher bills for the governor's attention. And one of them was brought forward by a representative, Wendy Horman, out of Idaho, falls it's the bill She's long promised. It's a tax credit that, frankly, has very little accountability in there about how those tax dollars are going to be spent and that kind of thing. And then the second bill from Senator Dave Lent, who is chairman of the Senate Education Committee, who brought forward an expansion of the empowering parents grant program as a voucher bill. Talk us to really quickly, just a little bit about those two bills, and kind of what we see going forward with those two pieces of legislation.

Unknown: 6:25

So yeah, her legislation, ostensibly, it's a tax credit that's capped at $50 million I think there was some good discussion in the committee about like, so how do you cap a tax credit? Essentially, what you're doing is saying, Okay, we'll reimburse your tuition costs up to five grand, and essentially you float the tuition cost to say your tuition is 15 grand. Pay. Pay 15 grand. Say you're a low income family, working family. You pay 15 grand up front to a school, then you just hope and pray that the government doesn't run out of money before they reimburse you for that cost. No family is actually going to take that risk. So when they say this is for the the families who need it the most, that's completely wrong. And of course, there's no real accountability in this bill at all. There was a lot of kind of side long glances at the philosophy of accountability, like, well, you know, private schools regulate themselves, right? Yeah,

Mike Journee: 7:22

so we that's a bill we expected from her, but I'll be honest, I wasn't expecting Senator lent to bring forward a bill to expand the empowering parents program. That was an interesting twist for me. I wasn't paying close attention. Maybe you knew about it, but that bill expands that program by $20 million to to be 50 million. Both numbers right in line with the number that the governor mentioned during his stay the state address about whatever voucher program he would support. So talk a little bit about that bill, if you would. Senator

Unknown: 7:49

Len, longtime friend, I think, to IEA, and I think when the governor said we need $50 million for a school choice program, Senator Len said, Well, the best person to write this is a long time critic of of these programs, someone who's done research on it, so I think he's being really thoughtful in the way he constructs this program. I don't think, I mean, we don't agree with it, right? We we don't think that any of these programs are, can be fair, responsible, accountable and transparent, as the governor outlined, kind of inherently, but Lent is trying to construct a completely, kind of new version of these. And to his credit, at least at the you know, in the critique ahead of the previous legislation about the tax credit piece, he's constructing it as an education savings account that would, that would actually go to families below, mostly below $80,000 of income. 75% of the bill will go to people who families who make less than 60 grand. So he's targeting low income folks with the bill, I think, in direct contrast to the the rhetoric you hear on the House side, that bill will not be going to low income folks, Lentz would and then he's also added a kind of suite of accountability metrics on here that are, I think, extremely popular amongst voters, things like background checks for employees that have unsupervised contact with students. I think that's a pretty no brainer, like pretty big no brainer, just protect kids, right? Standardized tests so you can actually see what the return on investment is for taxpayers maintain accurate enrollment data. Again, pretty low bar compliance with state laws related to special education, non discrimination and parental rights. Again, if you're putting this much legislative activity into schools with taxpayer funds, doesn't make sense to just create a huge loophole for other schools that might be funded by taxpayers,

Mike Journee: 9:44

and all the things that you just mentioned, Chris are things that public schools do already right? They're things that are part of the working model of public schools and making sure that those folks who are getting public dollars for private school tuition should be held to the same account.

Unknown: 9:59

He's kind. Calling the bluff on the competition piece, I think because in a lot of the pro voucher people will be like, well, this, you know, this makes public schools have to compete for students against private schools, right? And the obvious thing there is, it's not competition if you're playing by completely different sets of rules. So what Senator Lent is doing is trying to give some of those rules also to the private schools that would be getting taxpayer funds here to say, Okay, if you want to compete, then here's how you're going to compete. It's going to be a fair playing field, right? So again, we are not a fan of this legislation. I think that Senator Len has put a lot of thought into it, and he's been very transparent, I think, with educators about this, saying, essentially, the governor says he wants a $50 million school choice program, and you can either have representative hormones version, or you can have a version written by someone who cares about public schools deeply and has put a lot of thought into this stuff. We're on a good spot here, but I think Senator land has been a really honest broker in these conversations. Well, we watch

Mike Journee: 11:01

them, both of those bills as they go forward. We probably expect a public hearing on both of them next week as I'm taping this. This is Friday, so next week, it will probably hear something about public hearings on both of those, both bills going forward and really quickly too,

Unknown: 11:14

if you want to take action on those bills. So Senator Lenz version will be in Senate Education and then representative hormones bill, which I think is probably the one I would prioritize if you were going to choose one to send a bunch of emails and letters and stuff. Representative hormones legislation will be in the house Revenue and Taxation Committee sometime next week, so try and get on the horn and contact senators and representatives on those committees.

Mike Journee: 11:41

So Chris, we're also going to be putting together an email option for folks who want to to sound off on these bills. If they go to idahoea.org and look at the story about the legislation this week, there will be a link to a tool in there that folks can do that's an option for folks and and members and others. Might be getting a text inviting them to send emails around this legislation. So Chris, we got just a couple of minutes left. I want to talk really quickly about the couple of other bills that came forward this week. Also on Wednesday, the House Education Committee sent representative Ted hill. They brought forward a rework of his flag bill that was introduced last week and endorsed by the House Education Committee. There are a lot of questions about that bill, in spite of the fact that the committee passed it with a do pass recommendation to the floor. It looks like representative Hill is trying to answer some of those questions. I'm not sure if he succeeded or not, but he reintroduced the bill anyway. We think this is a bill that's really targeted at the pride flag, trying to keep pride flags out of classrooms, something that our members have long said is a really important tool for making sure students feel welcome and know that they're in a safe place in a classroom. Any thoughts about this legislation? Yeah,

Unknown: 12:55

I think pride flags were a big one. I you know representative mentioned the GAD flag, that don't trade on me flag, other kind of flags like that. So it encompasses a whole bunch of different types of speech for teachers and yeah, so the committee sent it to the floor with a do pass recommendation, but he changed it to be more deleterious to the First Amendment a little bit here. So and he added a piece that you can also not display flags of quote, unquote, hostile nations. So, you know, in the original bill, there was a carve out that said, okay, yeah, like you're teaching history, geography, whatever, yeah, you can show flags of nations. That's like, part of your normal curriculum. That makes tons of sense, right? That's pretty common sense that even if the rest of the bill isn't but yeah, so he changed it to, quote, unquote, hostile nations. Determining what a hostile nation is is a fascinating discussion to get into. But you know, as has been pointed out by the bill sponsor, even the United States hasn't officially declared war since World War Two. So, you know, including like Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, all of that never actually declared war. So instead, is legislation asks a the school board to figure out who the hostile nations are and develop a flag policy that deletes those so now we have school boards wading into foreign policy. Apparently, you can imagine how interesting that could possibly get. So obviously, this is a serious BILL Right. Like, I think that it's easy, I think to laugh at this legislation because of how ridiculous it is and like, how strange it is to hear people saying, we need to constrain speech to protect liberty, right? That's Orwellian, right? But the obvious targets here are LGBT students, and there are a whole bunch of other kind of curricular activities and teacher activities that are just kind of taking the strays here, right? Like there's always. Uh, collateral damage, and obviously the felt direct damage to LGBT students and their families when this kind of stuff goes through. So a ridiculous bill, but someone to still take seriously and fight back against. So we expect that on the floor at some points, well, they just

Mike Journee: 15:17

printed it. That's all they did yesterday. So there'll be another public hearing in that committee about this new legislation. Well, one of the quick bill that I want to touch on was Chris Mathias, a representative out of Boise, and also a member of the House Education Committee, brought forward a bill about bullying. It's a bill that he ran last year that died narrowly on the House floor, but he brought it back again this year and just got the endorsement of the House Education Committee. They're going to have a public hearing about it. And again, this is legislation that would require school district to both notify parents of a bullying incident, the parents both of the victim of the bullying and also of the aggressor of the bullying. We'll see where this goes, and it hasn't done well in the past. In previous years, I guess the House members last year felt it was an overreach in some ways. So anyway, that bill is coming forward, and we'll be keeping an eye on that too.

Unknown: 16:07

Yeah. I mean, it's ironic, kind of talking about representative Mathias bill as overreach compared to the bill we were just talking about. Again, it is amazing, the scrutiny applied to Representative Mathias bill, which is just letting parents know that their kid is either a bully or a victim of bullying. This is not overreach, and last year's version was not overreach either. So he kind of pared it down a little bit, making sure that the only notification that would be required is when the incident rises to the level of suspension. So he's doing his best trying to meet these standards. But again, we're running into this kind of partisan thing. Represent Mathias is a Democrat, represent Ted Hill is a Republican. And you can kind of see the scrutiny and standards applied to the minorities legislation is a lot higher than that of the majority party, which I think is a really destructive dynamic when it comes to actually passing good policy. So anyways, it's a good bill. We support this bill. Representative Matthias has been really thoughtful in trying to get bipartisan support for this, and it very narrowly died last year. So he's doing his best here, and I think it's really admirable.

Mike Journee: 17:19

Well, we'll keep an eye on Bill, like I said, and anything else that comes up here this next week as well. So Chris Perry, thank you for this quick rundown of the week, and good luck at the steakhouse. Thanks, man. Appreciate it. Next up on the Iowa reporter podcast, the expiration of the Idaho career ladder, the framework long used by the legislature to fund educator salaries in the state. This planned expiration poses challenging problems for IA locals as they look to their contract negotiations this spring, IAEA region director Jason McKinley and IAEA Executive Associate Executive Director Matt Compton discuss how educator pay could be impacted. Well. Jason McKinley, Matt Compton, thank you for joining us for this edition of the IE report podcast. And you know, we're going to tackle a meaty topic today. We're going to talk about changes to Idaho's educator career ladder and the the the framework that the lawmakers use to allocate money for teacher salaries to the school districts. In some ways, it was an intentional change that that was always intended to happen with the implementation of the career ladder back in 2015 but it could create some challenges for us. Matt Hoffman, give us a little bit of a look at what exactly is the career ladder and how is it going to change in the next year or so? Yeah, for

Unknown: 18:50

sure, the career ladder initially was placed into code in 2015 this was my second legislative session with the IAEA. When it was negotiated, it was an extremely contentious legislative fight between lawmakers and educators and administrators. Originally, the system that they came up for the career ladder only had two rungs. It had a $40,000 starting teacher salary rung, and that mid tier would be a $50,000 and then they came up with something that was called the master educator premium, which was a set of a whole bunch of hoops and things that educators had to jump through. They had to create a portfolio demonstrating all of the work that they've done over the past three years in their classroom. They demonstrate that to the administrators, if they pass some sort of rubric examination, then they would qualify for that master educator premium, which was additional resources that was supposed to go to the educator. A couple of years later, when Governor little is elected, he sees that the career ladder the first five years of implementation was about to expire and in 2018 And put in an additional rung the career ladder, so that the top tier was now going to be $60,000 so you have a 40, a 50 and a$60,000 tier for the career ladder. And over the last handful of years, the legislature has been dumping 10s of millions dollars into salaries and benefits based on the formulaic outlay of the career ladder. These were things that were all decided, both in 2015 and 2018 how much money was going to be invested into salaries for educators based on the total number of teachers, and this was going to be a clean and easy way for us to find ways to compensate educators but maintain local control for negotiations at home. So this year, what we're finding ourselves is that the career ladder, just like in 2016 is expiring, meaning there are no longer large tranches of money that are going into the career ladder or salaries from the legislature. Instead, now they're looking at, how do they adjust salaries and benefits for educators based on a percentage in the governor's state of the state? He said, I'd like for us to look at 5% cost of living increases for all Idaho employees, which would include teachers. Right now, what jfac is trying to figure out is, how do they take a career ladder formula where salaries and benefits are placed upon a grid and within cohorts and cells, and how do you increase each of those by 5% what does that look like when that money goes out to the school districts in preparation for bargaining, essentially right now in the second week of The legislative session, that's where we find ourselves in discussing the career ladder.

Mike Journee: 21:45

So essentially, what we're saying here is that this framework, that for the past 10 years the legislature has been investing in kind of an automatic investment in teacher salaries over that period, is changing, and now it's going to be a little bit more part of the political process each session that the legislature in town. Is that correct?

Matt Compton: 22:07

I think that's a very good way to describe it. With a career ladder. You know, year over year, we could roughly estimate how much money was going into salaries and benefits based on the number of educators, the number of students, we knew how many support units we were going to have unless we knew how much money was going out to districts, they're going to make changes to how much money and how that money goes out to districts. That's going to be really what complicates negotiations going into this year. And

Mike Journee: 22:36

Jason, you know, we asked you to be part of this conversation, because you're one of the most important experts around on school district financing and the war. It's a complex issue all the way from the state level down into the school district level. From what I understand, school districts aren't expected to necessarily match the career ladder in their salary schedules. Salary schedules are set at the local level, and reaching here. That's kind of created some challenges with Horace, with our members, with some of the investments that they've been making on career salaries, it's been confusion, I think, among some of our members. Can you talk a little bit about how that works at the local level, and how they set salaries of local level, and how that's related to the career ladder for us?

Unknown: 23:19

Mr. Mike, and you've touched on something that really it's been a 10 year process that we still haven't gotten everybody at the same level of understanding, is that the career ladder is a phrase that is used as part of our salary based apportionment model for people to understand the way salary based apportionment works in Idaho really hasn't changed since 1994 the crew ladder made a change from what's called a Progress Index to arbitrary numbers, and unfortunately, what happened in 2015 is there are districts that have traditionally and continue to only pay as the state pays. And when you had a progressive index that made equity in a predictable salary schedule. It had 13 vertical steps, seven horizontal columns. And when the career ladder team in the place districts that moved to that, we had local associations buy into it. The problem with that was there's no equity in the career ladder allocation. We had cases where over a five year period, one accrual letter rungs may go up by $5,000 where another rung might go up by $850 there's no equity in that. When these monies come to the local level, there was always a perception if you were a p3 and the p3 value was $45,000 that's what the State gave to pay you, and that's what you would be paid. That's what you were, quote, unquote word, the reality of which is that number gets combined with all the other numbers in your district, and run through a formula, and you get what's called an average salary. But you take all the employees in the district, they've got one day of teaching or. 100 years of teaching, and you get the exact same dollar amount that is put into the formula for every teacher. It's very typical today that the average salary in the district is $50,000 or maybe a little better than $50,000 in some districts, every teacher where they been teaching one day or one minute, that's how much they're actually generating. But it gets put through a formula, and that's your total apportionment. The state, in moving away from, as Matt described, these continuing pockets of money, has put us into a pre 2015 situation for districts where their salary based apportionment is no longer predictable, ladder gave predictability. It gave a commitment, and it was for lack of better terms, it was a safe a safe way to plan ahead for school districts, I think of some of the districts like ponderae comes to mind, where they did some very progressive things based upon the commitment the state made with the career ladder, they could not make that long term, five, seven year commitment, because we're now at the whim of each legislative session to decide how much money schools are going to get for a portion.

Mike Journee: 26:15

Yeah. And on top of that, we also have this concept of Micheal FTEs, and funded FTEs, where some districts use bonds and levies to pay a little bit extra to get more educators in the classroom, or to pay a little bit more to those that they already have. So it just becomes this really complex mix of things. The equity situation is a really important one that you bring up a district that's well to do, and taxpayers are willing to pass bonds or levies, then oftentimes those educators are in better shape financially than they would be in a less affluent district.

Jason McKinley: 26:52

Yeah, Mike, you made a great point, and you we can show that prior to the career ladder, Idaho has always been a Have and Have Not state those districts that have levies and use those funds to pay their staff pay more and their recruitment retention rates are better than those districts that only pay what the state pays. As I tell in bargaining trainings, I say, if you only get paid exactly what the state pays you, you are tied for the worst paying district in state. There's no other way to look at it. But I mean, what is of interest to the taxpayer or to anybody who follows this is that prior to the career ladder, when the legislature stopped adequately funding the progressive index model and each year just decided how much money to put into the salary schedule, we saw this dramatic rise in the amount of local funds that were used to fund salary schedules. More and more scarce resources from school districts had to be used to pay their staff. When the career ladder came into being in law, we saw a decrease, and it's been a continual decrease in the percentage of local funds used to fund salary schedules. So we had districts that were funding for salary schedules at 35% out of local funds in 2011 2012 that are now at 10% or 8% which allows the districts to do other things with those monies. And one of the things that has been really, I think, missed by a lot of people in this state is that a lot of those monies that we're going to our Certified staff have started going to our classified staff. It's you're not going to find people to work for 725, an hour. And so we've seen this sharp increase in the local funds that are going to our classified staff, and it's you pick your district. I can't think of a district that says we've got all the classified staff we need. If this predictability is gone, my concern is that we're back to putting a much more difficult burden on local school districts to have levies to use those scarce funds. I don't know what it's a difficult decision at a local level. Do we then start re emphasizing these monies back towards our certified to recruit, retain our certified? If so, we're going to lose our classified or they're not going to work for those poor wages. And so you've, I think you've hit a really big challenge with the system we find ourselves in moving forward.

Mike Journee: 29:25

Yeah, you know, we often talk about the chronic underfunding of public education in the state that's been going on for decades. And we talk about how those bonds and levies are part of the way this district backfill, and if they can't pass those bonds and levies, then they have a really hard time. This sounds like Matt Compton. It sounds like this is just gonna complicate that even more and bring in the I'm just gonna use the word ridiculous politics that we find around education at the state house these days. Yeah,

Unknown: 29:56

absolutely. You bring up the chronic underfunding of education and. One of the reasons that it was so critical that the career ladder be implemented is that the state needed to find a more competitive way to compensate educators with the competing states around us, whereas Wyoming, Washington, Oregon, they're all paying educators significantly more than Idaho. So in a way to create that competition, they thought, well, let's create the career ladder, but they also built in a tremendous amount of accountability into the career ladder, different measurements growth measurements that educators need to demonstrate in order to qualify for different types of increases for salary and benefits. So as the career ladder made more money flow to districts that also increased to the complex complications of getting money to specific educators based on which cohort they were part of, or how many years of service, or whether or not they completed the master educator premium. There were a lot of hoops that folks needed to jump through. So we created a lot more predictability with the career ladder. But as we've discussed, other states around us have continued to make investments in education and the chronic underfunding of education, these historic investments over the last decade into school funding really has been historic and noteworthy, and we are still chronically underfunded. When it comes to Idaho education, you can look at our classrooms and our dilapidated buildings. You can look at the pipeline report that the State Board of Education just released that found that administrators and educators and the business community all say that compensating educators is one of the top three issues so that we have highly qualified educators in the state so that we're prepared to educate students regardless of of their zip code. And so we really are going into some gray territory, without any kind of predictability, and with J fact now Joint Finance and appropriations committee at the legislature arguing over how best to take that 5% and overlay it over salaries and benefits for educators, and what does that look like for other state employees? The debate is, should we only give $1.55 an hour to everybody? And I truly don't know how you would qualify that$1.55 per educator across the board, districts would see the that increase go out, but it is still extremely difficult to qualify and predict what that money would look like in preparation for negotiations. Now, if I was an educator and I settled down in the community, let's use the example like lapway, I want to teach in a rural district, and I'm going to give 567, years of my career to that in order for me to plant roots in that community, I have to be able to make enough money to live in that community, and that starting teacher salary in Idaho, even with the career ladder out over the last handful of years, has still placed the starting teacher salary near the Bottom of the nation, I still think we're ranked 50th when it comes to starting teacher salary, and even in average teacher salary, we're buried somewhere near the bottom. And so even after 10 years of investment in the career ladder, there's a lot more work that needs to be done in order for us to attract and retain highly qualified teachers to be in the classrooms with these incredibly important natural resources of Idaho students.

Mike Journee: 33:26

Yeah, that's right, but just quickly honor to remind our listeners that that to follow the latest news on public education. You can follow Ida reporter. You go to idahoea.org, backslash reporter, or go over to the News tab at the top of the navigation and find reporter there, as well as this podcast. So Jason, you know as as a Region Director for in region two up in the Moscow Lewiston area, this unpredictability of injecting State House politics into the determination about allocating funds for teacher salaries creates a whole different level of complexity and challenge for locals as they're beginning to prepare for bargaining for their salaries, as we mentioned, the career ladder that and the local salary schedule have not had to match up in recent years, but it did provide some predictability. Vocals could understand how much money districts were going to be given with the intent of it being spent on salaries. Wasn't always spent on salaries, but now that predictability is going out the window, that's going to complicate contract negotiations all across the state internet.

Unknown: 34:43

Yeah, as they say, the devil is in the details. And you're right, the highest paying salary in the career ladder as an advanced professional five I think, is roughly $68,000 a year. I don't have a district in my region that doesn't pay more than several. Will pay over$80,000 a year. But as that apportionment flows to a school district, while one can look at the school funding and say, it's incredibly complicated, once you really dig into it, it's not that complicated, and it's predictable, and the predictability and the, if you will, comfort of how we fund schools in Idaho, been at the whims of the legislature. It has been a commitment of the legislature, a commitment of the state that was predictable. And now that we are moving to something that we don't know, what exactly it's going to look like, $1.50 per hour per employee, or how are they going to add 5% to the current model? Creates some unpredictability and some difficulty in planning for the future. And if you're having difficulty planning for the future, it's really hard to bargain for the future, I would say, in every instance I'm familiar with negotiations, the negotiations have always erred on a more conservative side in a financial settlement, and that was with predictability and stability. With unpredictability. I'm not so sure that districts are going to be real comfortable with making the kinds of commitments they've made in the past. And I look at a district that does follow the career ladder as its salary schedule, if that model is codified but not funded as it has been, how do they now determine what they're going to pay people? That's been their methodology. This cell says this is what you get paid. That cell is no longer funded like that. That cell number doesn't change. What do they do in some of our rural districts, the superintendent is the superintendent, maybe sometimes durbs, bus chaperones. You can just think of all of the hats some of these folks have to wear. The Business Manager is not a CPA and is not a school finance expert. This is really going to be a struggle for this. I am deeply concerned about the mechanics of how these monies are going to flow to districts for their apportionment to be able to determine this is what we look like for next year based upon our current staffing. If that's not really clear, abundantly predictable, it's going to make bargaining and salary discussions incredibly difficult and Micah, that brings up something that has been an issue over the last handful of years. When it comes to initiatives from the legislature, we can look at the what was it this $6,500 investment that went into each rung of the career ladder that was supposed to like ongoing$6,500 increase for salaries now that goes into every rung of the career ladder, but what some districts do is, you know, they have to hire above and beyond what the number of Support Units The state provides funding for, meaning that they need to have more educators. They need to have more ESPs in the classroom. They need more janitorial services. Whatever it is that their school district needs out or exceeds or differentiates itself from what the state is going to make as an allocation so that takes away a lot of the local control for a school district to build and develop a district that reflects their community. If the chronic underfunding continues, those decisions at the bargaining come up table come down to do we compensate our educators so that we can give them a fair, livable wage in a community and retain them for next year? Or do we take those resources and invest them into something else in our district? Those are the hard decisions that the administrators and the folks at the bargaining table are going to have to make with this new chaos that comes with this new way of investing in the career ladder.

Mike Journee: 39:07

So Matt, what are you hearing at the State House about, if there's any discussion about some kind of a change, a fix that will create more predictability, is Superintendent Critchfield or the governor, or anyone concerned about this in the way that we are,

Unknown: 39:22

I think that folks are trying to get through this legislative session without opening up too many code sections. In order to make substantive changes to the career ladder, you would have to go into code, and you would have to add additional monies to each of those wrongs. And jfac, the Joint Finance and appropriations committee would actually have to fund it. We don't have a very friendly legislature this year. We're arguing over a number of issues, first and foremost being vouchers. The first voucher bill that comes out had a two $50 million price tag on it. All others have no less than $50 million Yeah. And so the legislature is also struggling between, are we going to make an investment in the education system that we're constitutionally bound to fund, which is the public school systems, or are we going to fund a secondary form of private schools through a voucher system, which would decrease the amount of financial resources that could go to districts that could continue the investments in schools that would address that chronic underfunding. I think the legislature right now is less focused on, how are we going to compensate the current public education teachers that we have in our schools, and overwhelmingly focused on, how do we establish a secondary form of education that doesn't comport with our constitution through a voucher program,

Mike Journee: 40:44

a secondary system that they've created self fulfilling prophecy for by this chronic underfunding. When they talk about underperforming public schools and their lack of proper funding for them, the they're creating that self fulfillment problems. That's

Unknown: 40:57

right, Mike and you, we mentioned that the amount of kind of accountability that's in the career ladder, the measurements that all of the educators must meet in order to qualify for any kind of a raise or advancement do they want to move along in their career path? You know, there's a lot of accountability built into the career ladder we're discussing now. You know, in these voucher schemes, sending out money to schools and the to the, you know, 10s of millions of dollars with no accountability. They don't have to be qualified, they don't have to be certified, they don't even have to have background checks. And this money will go out in to schools in the form of vouchers and private and parochial schools, while traditional public schools will continue to see the chronic underfunding. They will see less money because of vouchers, and it will just continue to exacerbate our ability to attract and retain highly qualified educators in Idaho, yeah, and

Mike Journee: 41:51

I guess one quick extra point around the state house for the side of this is what this every year, there's always horse trading that happens, right? There's always something that gets caught up in the last minute negotiations around a bill that leadership launch, or something like that. I could easily see educator salaries getting tied up into those kind of negotiations, um, at the last minute, which the politics at the State House right now, just it screams that kind of hostage taking around this don't you agree 100% I

Unknown: 42:24

think that we will likely see towards the end of the legislative session, some kind of Sophie's choice between funding vouchers, 50 to $100 million with no accountability in one hand, or a significant Increase in salaries and benefits as sort of the take your medicine and enjoy this. You'll get both vouchers and increased funding. That's what happened in Utah over the last couple of legislative sessions where the governor and the legislatures pre negotiated a significant increase in educator salaries along with a voucher scheme. We've seen that in Arizona, in Oklahoma, in Florida and other states where vouchers have taken over their budgets, but we've seen the traditional public schools suffer, and so that's essentially a closing course we're on during this session, and it will be up to us for our voices to communicate with lawmakers, why continued investment in our traditional public schools right now is something that's absolutely critical, absolutely not

Mike Journee: 43:32

well. Jason, Matt, any last thoughts about this before we wrap up for this session,

Unknown: 43:38

I would just reiterate something I mentioned earlier is that those districts that do follow the career ladder as their salary schedule, dollar for dollar, this move, if it's not done correctly, if it's not done with predictability, could be a real disaster for them, because they they may not have a clear picture of how they are going to aid people at the local level, the model that they have used for the last 10 years will no longer be applicable to the way they're funded, and that could be a huge problem at the local level. Mike, I think this conversation demonstrates that there's still time in this session for the legislature to reevaluate how they want to approach salaries and benefits for educators. How you can differentiate these folks from other state employees? They've never been treated treated the same in the past. Everything is in separate code. I think that the legislature really should try to make fewer significant and jerky policy decisions this legislative session that will cause a lot of disruption and havoc. We've had a lot of that over the last handful of years, and I think that you know any level of stability that the legislature can provide when it comes to ensuring educators that when they get to the bargaining table, that there will be something to go towards. Their paycheck at the end of the year, some increase in compensation is going to be absolutely critical. Yeah.

Mike Journee: 45:06

And so, you know, I would, I would expect, Jason, you would recommend that that local union presidents and their bargaining teams get on the ball and kind of understand what's going on and start working with their Region Director around this as soon as they possibly can. Of course, we don't know what we don't know until the legislature adjourns, but locals can do a little bit of prep in advance and get a better understanding of what's coming their way so that they're a little bit better prepared for whatever does come their way.

Unknown: 45:33

Absolutely, this is we talk about your salary schedule and what you negotiate at the local level. These are your lifetime earnings. This is a reflection of the values of your local association, of your district, of your community, and it's really big stuff, and it makes a difference in your students lives. And so, yeah, absolutely, it's time to get engaged and be a part of a proactive solution, as opposed to just out at the last minute. This doesn't work very well.

Mike Journee: 46:03

Welcome. Thank you for having this conversation with me. Very complex, very challenging issue in front of us, something that I think our members are going to want to know more about as we go through this session. Jason McKinley, Matt Compton, thanks for joining us. Thank you for listening to this episode of the IAEA reporter podcast, and thanks to IEA, Jason McKinley, Matt Compton and Chris Perry for joining us. Please watch for updates about new episodes on IAEA social media channels or sign up to receive IA reporter email updates on our website@idahoea.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. You