State education issues begin to take shape in Cd'A; school boards association prepares for next legislative session

COEUR d'ALENE — School officials, board members, and four state legislators from North Idaho attended a meeting in Coeur d'Alene Thursday night to discuss topics that will likely be addressed in Boise next year.

A discussion led by Karen Echeverria, executive director of the Idaho School Boards Association, on 12 resolutions her organization will be working with legislators on when the 2016 session begins, was the focal point of the meeting at Venture High School. The ISBA is a nonprofit organization that provides policy services, legislative advocacy and board training to more than 500 locally elected school board members.

According to its website, the goal of the ISBA is to "be the authority that is consulted for their knowledge and experience regarding successful school district governance."

Echeverria began her discussion by describing how the resolution process works for ISBA. Each year, members have the opportunity to submit resolutions to the organization by July 31. Those resolutions are then edited and, when applicable, merged before ISBA reviews the content of the resolution and makes recommendations on how the documents will move forward.

"That recommendation will either be a 'Do Pass,' a 'Do Not Pass,' or they can make no recommendation on those resolutions," Echeverria said. "And once we talk about these here, we ask that you discuss each of these resolutions as a board."

Discussion amongst members is critical to the process, Echeverria said, because members have the ultimate say on what happens with the resolutions when they vote on them at the organization's annual convention in November.

Echeverria then launched into a description of each of the 12 resolutions and from which area of Idaho they came. The first resolution discussed involved how school districts disseminate legal notices.

"Under state statute there are certain things school districts must publish in the legal notices section of the newspaper," she said. "There's also another statute that school districts must post this information on their website. What we're finding is that very few people are actually going to the legal notices for that, they're actually going to the school district's website."

As such, the resolution questions the necessity of publishing these notices in the newspaper and asks legislators to allow districts to decide if they want to spend money on the newspaper notices or just publish the information online. Echeverria added that the ISBA board gave the resolution a "Do Pass" recommendation.

Other resolutions discussed at the meeting involved allowing the sale of public property to be discussed in executive session, optimizing reimbursements from the school-based Medicaid Program, and timelines for teacher and principal evaluations.

After Echeverria concluded, each of the four legislators in attendance — Sen. Mary Souza, R-Coeur d'Alene; Rep. Ron Mendive, R-Post Falls; Sen. Bob Nonini, R-Coeur d'Alene; and Sage Dixon, R-Sandpoint — were given the opportunity to make statements to attendees about the resolutions and education in Idaho.

"I'm glad to see what you're interested in and I appreciate the work you are doing," said Souza, who sits on the Education Committee along with Nonini. "I think it's very important that we are comfortable communicating with each other."