Bills would weaken classroom instruction

The Idaho Legislature is in session, and the Education Committee is doing their best to create legislation that is anything but supportive of our schools.

House Bill 221, which was supported by local representatives Ron Mendive and Tony Wisniewski, was passed from the committee to the full House for consideration. HB 221 would allow just about anyone with a college degree to become a public school teacher without any training whatsoever. So instead of funding our schools in such a way that local school districts can attract and retain qualified teachers, they are willing to put untrained, unqualified and uncertified people in charge of educating our children.

Think about it. The person who spends 20 minutes cutting your hair would be required to undergo more training and certification than the person who spends nine months teaching your child.

Each school year, parents find out that their child’s teacher is leaving for a job at another school or exiting the profession. Without the right support in their new classrooms, one in five Idaho teachers (or 20 percent) will leave the profession after their first year, according to the Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) Northwest.

Supporting new teachers can be costly and resource-intensive for districts, and staff turnover negatively impacts student learning. The problems are compounded when high rates of turnover occur in hard-to-staff schools as the personnel churn creates a steady flow of inexperienced teachers in classrooms, along with overall school instability, where students are already struggling to succeed academically.

Another piece of legislation being discussed is House Bill 215. This bill would provide public tax dollars for families who choose to have their children attend private schools to use to pay for “computer hardware, internet access, or other technological devices or services (and) tuition or fees at a private school” among other items. So instead of focusing on improving the financial support for Idaho’s public schools, legislators would like to use money to support families who choose to use ways to educate their children other than public schools.

There are a number of flaws with this legislation. Not the least of which is taking taxpayer dollars and channeling it to private schools. Private schools that can pick and choose which students they accept. Private schools that only those with the financial means can send their students. Private schools that are primarily in urban areas; so all Idahoans will pay for services that most will not be able to access. Most families do not have the time or resources to provide daily transportation to a private school outside of their local neighborhood. HB 215 is nothing more than a way to take money that should be going to support students across the state, and giving it to a handful of families.

Members of the Legislature want to put people in the position of teaching our children without any formal training. They also want to funnel off money to private and parochial schools instead of investing in our public schools; despite the fact that there is a $600 million budget surplus and Idaho ranks 51st in per pupil funding. These measures are not acceptable, and will not improve the quality of our schools.

We urge you to contact your representative and tell them to vote no on these bills and any others that do not provide the high quality education that Idaho students deserve. Also, be sure to vote yes on your local school district’s levy. It’s clear that there are those in the legislature who have no intention of funding our schools to the level that our students deserve.

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Rick Jones

Idaho Education Association Region 1 president

Kelli Aiken

Idaho Education Association Region 1 vice president