The battle over school choice: Leaders debate the future of education in Idaho
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IDAHO FALLS — It’s one of the hottest issues affecting more than 380,000 kids in Idaho, and two experts tackled it head on — should school choice options be expanded this year by the state Legislature?
Bonneville Joint School District 93 Superintendent Scott Woolstenhulme sparred with Mountain States Policy Institute President and CEO Chris Cargill, who heads a free market advocacy think tank based in Coeur d’Alene.
The “School Voucher Debate” was hosted by the Bonneville County Republican Central Committee Thursday night at the Snake River Events Center at the Shilo Inn.
Woolstenhulme, a native of eastern Idaho, has been the superintendent of Idaho’s third-largest school district for five years.
Cargill is a strong proponent of education choice and is the father of a 16-year-old young man with autism.
Both presenters agreed that school choice is essential to education in Idaho as required by the state constitution.
Pro-public education
Woolstenhulme argued that Idaho and District 93 currently provide extensive opportunities for school choice — including charter schools, a technical-career high school, online school and open enrollment.
He recognized that some students thrive in an environment with smaller class sizes.
“Our school district has been very open to school choice, and I do believe that that’s an essential part of kids’ education,” Woolstenhulme said.
Currently, “all those institutions that are paid for from public tax dollars are subject to the same laws and rules that create a uniform internal system of education” — meaning students are held accountable to the same math and reading proficiency standards in elementary schools and need to finish Idaho’s requirements to graduate from high school.
Teachers must meet all the state’s requirements and standards to be certified to instruct.
But private schools are not held accountable to the same standards as public schools, he said.
They also cost taxpayers more money in the end, he said.
“Every time we create a new school, and they pull those students out of a traditional school, that’s duplicating services, and it’s costing us more as taxpayers,” Woolstenhulme said.
He described efforts to establish Educational Savings Accounts or vouchers in Idaho, as an attempt to cherry pick students and inject for-profit motives into education.
“In one direction are those who believe in our state’s constitutional promise of a uniform, thorough and free system of public schools for every child in the state,” Woolstenhulme said. “On the other side are those who believe that it is time to dismantle that system, that it no longer works for our families and no longer works for our students, and we need to…privatiz(e) education.”
Finally, the superintendent argued that “public school choice also “segregate(s) our schools – by economic status, race and disability.”
A study of the demographics of Idaho’s public charter schools in 2015 for the State Board of Education found:
- “89% enroll significantly fewer special needs students than regular traditional schools.
- 94% enroll significantly fewer minority students.
- 83% enrolled zero students with limited English proficiency.
- 66% enrolled significantly fewer students with poverty.”
For-profit schools would more likely fail to educate special needs students, whose educational programs typically cost an additional $2,000 to $3,000 more to administer, but can exceed $100,000 annually for some students, Woolstenhulme said.
Pro-Education Savings Accounts or tax credits
Cargill argued that expanding school choice is about better meeting the needs of students and allowing their parents to choose how their child’s education funds are spent.
He argued that public education fails some of its students, like his son’s school district that did not implement his Individualized Education Program (IEP) for autism.
“Not only was (the district) not following that IEP, but it lost the IEP, and it didn’t tell us that for about a year and a half,” Cargill said.
If a school is not the right fit for a child, he said, that student and their parents deserve better options.
“Educational choice is simply the idea that parents, regardless of means, should enjoy the freedom to choose where and how their children are educated,” Cargill said.
Public schools, charter and magnet schools, Education Savings Accounts, tuition and tax credits/scholarships and vouchers are all included in education choice, he explained.
What has been proposed in Idaho are not technically vouchers at all, Cargill stated, but are Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) where the money is initially allocated to the parents for each participating child, not directly to the schools.
So far 29 states have adopted similar measures – 18 have enacted Educational Savings Accounts (including Wyoming, Arizona, Montana and Utah); four have adopted education choice tax credits; six have tax scholarships and one state is awaiting election results.
He also pushed back against the notion that school choice policies are an attempt to defund public education. The latest proposed bill did not reallocate any existing money from public schools, he said.
“In most of these other states that have adopted some sort of education choice program, about 90% of kids stay in their public school setting. They like the parents and the families, (and) like that school,” he said.
Idaho’s school districts currently receive about $8,500 in annual funding for each student enrolled in public education, he said.
By that metric, Idaho’s students who are presently enrolled in a private school or home schooling save the state about $300 million annually.
Cargill agreed that private schools don’t have to follow all the standards and laws that apply to public schools, but said that under state and federal laws, they cannot discriminate against students.
Idaho education overview
Today, 318,660 students (77.1%) are enrolled in public education statewide, 26,767 (8.4%) attend public charter schools, 17,207 (5.4%) attend private schools and approximately 19,438 students (6.1%) are home schooled, according to Mountain States Policy Center’s estimate from U.S. Census Bureau and Idaho State Board of Education data.
Education makes up about 50% of the state’s budget right now, totaling $2.7 billion, and it has more than doubled over the past 10 years, Cargill reports.
What’s next
Three education choice bills were proposed in 2023 and 2024 but failed to advance in both the Idaho House and Senate.
In January 2024, Idaho Reps. Wendy Horman, R-Idaho Falls, co-sponsored House Bill 447, which would have set aside $50 million in state funds to create a “tax credit and a grant program for certain private school tuition and education expenses.” It was blocked in the House Revenue and Taxation Committee.
The law proposed providing a $5,000 tax credit or grant to the parents of each student attending a non-public school that could be applied toward school tuition, fees and other approved expenses. It was capped at $40 million in tax credits and $10 million in grants for students from lower-income households.
No legislation has been proposed yet for the upcoming session, but Sen. Doug Ricks, R-Rexburg, who supported last year’s Education Savings Account bill, believes a similar measure would be successful following the Nov. 5 election.
“It hasn’t quite made it all the way through, but there certainly is some momentum for it,” Ricks said. “… Just looking at who we have in our makeup of our Senate, I do think we have the votes to get something passed if it makes it over.”
He said last year’s bill requesting $50 million is a relatively small percentage of the overall $2 billion public education budget.
Two representatives from the Idaho Falls School District 91 Board of Trustees argued that Educational Savings Accounts, as previously proposed, would not hold private educators accountable for student achievement or how they spend public tax dollars.
“We have school choice today. We also have accountability,” Trustee Paul Haacke said. “But with this program, the way it has been suggested so far, the accountability will not be equitable among all the parties.”
“They’re trying to dismantle public education,” said Trustee Jeremy Westwood. “… “It’s my opinion that the Legislature, they’re not listening to the school districts. …They’re listening to a very small minority base that wants this, so they’re putting in legislation that is accommodating a small percentage of the Idaho population.”