A new dawn for education funding in Idaho is coming

By JOSH MCDONALD

Staff Reporter

COEUR d’ALENE — The way funding is formulated for Idaho’s schools is set to change and the state has looked to some heavy hitters to get the job done.

A town hall-style meeting at The Coeur d’Alene Resort was held by consultants with the Denver-based nonprofit Education Commission of the States on Tuesday.

The event was one of several similar meetings taking place across Idaho this month, as part of work by the Idaho State Legislature’s public school funding formula committee.

The committee was formed by the State Legislature in 2016 to conduct a statewide study and then make their recommendations related to a new school funding formula.

ECS school finance specialist Michael Griffith took questions and statements from the audience (more than half of the audience attending were Silver Valley residents), explaining he wasn’t there with the answers, but was instead trying to gather as much input as possible on the current issues to come up with a formula that works better for everyone.

Many people brought up how state and local funding was a struggle, but unfortunately that wasn’t what ECS and Griffith were there to fix.

“I like to use the analogy that there are two types of problems here, plumbing issues and water pressure issues,” Griffith said. “We are here to fix the plumbing, the water pressure (money) is a whole different issue.”

Basically Griffith was saying that they can’t control where the money comes from, but they can come up with a better way for how it gets allocated.

Griffith said that he was confident that the current funding formula would change from attendance-based to enrollment-based, while also being more equal for schools of all sizes, instead of flowing from the bigger schools down to the smaller ones.

But ultimately, ECS is just there to make a educated recommendation, as the Idaho State Legislature ultimately makes the final decision.

“We make recommendations,” Griffith said. “We’re like a caddy. We can recommend a club, but if the Legislature chooses to tee off with a putter, then they will tee off with a putter.”

Local Silver Valley pastor Corey Berti attended the meeting as a concerned citizen and was both alarmed and pleased with what he heard during the meeting.

“The biggest problem to start with is that Idaho needs to prioritize education by making the overall funding pie larger with more freedom given to individual districts,” Berti said. “I felt like the committee really heard those who spoke out last night. Now we can only hope our state legislators will hear the voice of the people through the committee and create the needed changes. Being from outside the education system, the meeting was informative. It was also interesting to hear how other state education systems work.”

Incoming Kellogg School District superintendent Nancy Larsen discussed why it is so important to school districts like Kellogg, Wallace and Mullan that the funding formula gets fixed.

“I believe the most pressing factor is the underlying issue of adequate funding,” Larsen said. “There are a variety of issues of concern for all districts. In particular, rural and small school districts have issues unique to them; however, adequate funding is an issue for all of us. Operational funding is now being placed upon local taxpayers instead of at the state level and the ability to provide this funding varies from district to district. This responsibility should be once again placed at the state level and configured into the new formula.”

The beginning of the formula will be worked out and decided upon during a five-hour live committee meeting on July 18, where the main building blocks of the new system will be determined, with the remaining details being worked out over the course of subsequent meetings.