Idaho Statesman
Little and Critchfield ignore how ‘school choice’ will blow a hole in Idaho’s budget | Opinion
Bob Kustra January 19, 2025
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I never set foot in a school supported with an appropriation from state government until graduate school. My parents chose to send me to a Catholic elementary school and a Catholic Diocesan high school. Never a word was uttered about how our parish school should be supported by taxpayer dollars. My parents simply understood that it was their “choice” to send me to a private school and, therefore, pay for it.
They also knew their taxes were supporting the public school two blocks away, and although that was not my parents’ “choice” for my education, they respected and supported the state’s responsibility to support the public schools.
Notice use of the word “choice.” I use it to exemplify parents who struggled to make ends meet, but knew it was their choice to either send me and my sister to a public school free of charge, as Thomas Jefferson envisioned it, or pay for private schooling.
“Choice” has been turned on its head by Gov. Brad Little, who flip-flopped. Once opposed to state aid to private schools, he’s now in favor. That should not be a shock to anyone observing the increasingly right-wing Republican majority in the state Legislature. Little practices that age-old political tradition of politicians who put their finger in the air to see which way the wind is blowing and then join the gathering herd.
Little is counting heads of Republicans in the Legislature and noticing a supreme swing to the right now that some incumbent conservative Republicans were defeated by extremists in last May’s primary. Add Attorney General Raul Labrador, who sues anyone in sight violating his own radical dictates, to the mix of extremists taking over the GOP, and Little simply caved to the new Republican Party in Idaho.
The Gem State, by the way, seems in step with the times, as state aid to private schools seem to be percolating among the far right in several states.
With this new expenditure, however, the parsimonious Idaho Legislature threatens to do serious harm to public education. Idaho already falls short of appropriating the funding necessary to help those most in need. (Medicaid comes to mind given that the Legislature refused to act, but a referendum passed with 60% of Idahoans in favor of expanding it.)
How can the state of Idaho adequately fund public education and yet afford to give $50 million to private schools? We’d be fools to assume the siphoning of $50 million from the state budget will remain the same over future years. Just like the camel who got his nose under the tent, private schools will be back for more. The growing number of legislators who bring their religious views to the state budget will faithfully oblige. Other budget priorities — like funding for public education — will come up short.
As Idaho opens its coffers for private schools, students who rely on our public schools for educational quality will become second-class citizens now competing with church schools for funding.
Then there’s the question of who truly needs tuition assistance for a private school education. Some affluent parents send their children to private schools, and they do not need help paying tuition. In the meantime, families of public school students who expect quality in their schools will suffer from the lack of funding down the road.
Many of the families who rely on Idaho’s public schools live in rural Idaho, where there is little or no access to private school education. The Idaho Center for Fiscal Policy presents a convincing case of how voucher programs divert public dollars to private education and reduce public funding for already financially strapped rural public education.
As the $50 million for private schools multiplies over the next few years, and the legislative sponsors are long gone from state government, parents in rural areas will wonder why public schools closed, while private schools in the Great State of Ada prosper. Rural legislators who thought choice was such a good idea will get primaried by opponents who will point to their public schools in need of state funding that has gone to private schools in Boise and other cities.
Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction Debbie Critchfield echoed Little, claiming funding to private schools cannot “take funds away from public schools.” But the best evidence from other states shows a much different outcome.
Another conservative state in the West, Arizona, is acknowledged as the leader of the private school choice movement, approving a plan in 2022 that extended state aid to these schools. Public officials claim that among the reasons for school closures is declining enrollment caused by students moving to private schooling. And ProPublica reported this year on research from the Grand Canyon Institute that the Arizona program blew a $322 million hole in its state budget.
Paula Kellerer, the CEO of Idaho Business for Education, also weighed in on the skyrocketing costs of Arizona’s program in the Idaho Statesman last Sunday with projections that should scare the wits out of Idaho legislators.
Iowa’s experience may be the best lesson of how state aid to private schools creates a budgetary nightmare of cost overruns. Lawmakers simply underestimated the number of families attracted by the subsidies. According to FutureEd, they predicted about 6,000 private school students for the 2023-24 school year would use public funding — only to learn that the number jumped to 11,100.
The Idaho Legislature is loaded to the gills with conservative legislators who arrive every year with one goal in mind: tax relief — which hardly produces a noticeable result in the family budget, but when the totality of the tax relief is calculated for its effect on the state budget, it extracts millions from budget priorities, including education.
There goes the reassurance that public schools will not be harmed. Little, Critchfield and legislators who think this is such a good idea expect us to live in their dream world while their “no harm to public schools” claim has been proved groundless by research in other states that have gone down this rabbit hole.
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Idaho is growing by leaps and bounds. Idaho's employers need and expect a quality public school system. Potential employers who consider bringing jobs to Idaho ask about the quality of public school education, as I learned when president of Boise State. The Chamber of Commerce occasionally asked me to explain and promote Idaho higher education to employers thinking about locating to Idaho, but those employers also asked about the quality of our "public" schools.
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Thomas Jefferson proclaimed the value of public education in educating the American citizenry. What Jefferson could not possible predict was a new frame of mind that crept into the culture — "Where's mine?" Gone are the days of my parents, who understood the difference between funding public schools and parents' shouldering the financing of private, usually religious, schools. It's now the private schools who benefit from he growing number of extremists elected to state legislatures, who wish to ignore the doctrine of separation of church and state.
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If there was ever a moment for taxpayers to join supporters of public education across Idaho, that time is now. This fiscally irresponsible plan, now urged by Little and Critchfield, will have dramatic ramifications on out state's resources and the future of out public schools. Idaho's reputation for educational quality will not be defined by the quality of education at private schools; it is the quality of its public schools that will continue to matter.
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https://www.idahostatesman.com/opinion/readers-opinion/article298651098.html