Marcos Guadarrama 01/06/2025
The Idaho Education Association (IEA) has weighed in on Gov. Little's proposed $50 million in school choice funding.
Mike Journee with the IEA, the state of Idaho's teachers union says they are not on board with the Governor's proposed funding.
"A voucher is any form of taking taxpayer dollars that could and should be invested in public schools and instead gives them to families who will use it for private education," Journee said.
Journee stated that unlike funding for public education, school choice funding is difficult to manage and track.
"It's often a black hole where tax dollars go in and no one knows how they were spent, or what they were spent on," Journee said.
A ProPublica investigation reports the state of Arizona who passed a similar bill's estimate of under $65 million per year for the program ballooned to over $420 million.
During his State of the State address last week, Gov. Little emphasized his hope to make any school choice funding passed by Idaho lawmakers responsible, transparent & accountable similar to that of public education funding. "It will prioritize the families that need it most and will not take away funding from public schools," Little said during his speech.
However, a 2022 analysis of universal vouchers from Grand Canyon University found that most families who received assistance for school choice already attended private schools. Something Journee warns could disproportionately affect Idaho's low-income families. "There is no voucher system in this country that would allow a low-income family to send their child to a specialized private school with the money they would get from the vouchers," he said.
He worries about the possible negative effects school choice could have on rural students in our state.
"Rural school districts have very few private school opportunities a family in a rural district won't have the opportunity to send their child to a private school in Boise, Cour d'Alene, or Idaho Falls," he said.
"They will be left with public schools being stripped of funding by voucher programs and left out in the cold."
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