The Governor’s state of the state speech was full of platitudes with a large part devoted to talking about Idaho’s education system. Unfortunately, Idaho still ranks number 43 in education. In the last year, we have found out how our education system is being run, which was brought out in a current Caldwell school district meeting. The Board was proposing some rules on gender identities that would allow boys to enter and utilize girls’ bathroom and locker room facilities.
Even State Senator Chris Trakel of Canyon County was there and said he was attending as an official, not as a parent. While the liberal media criticized Senator Trakel’s so-called belligerent behavior, many parents were cheering the newly elected senator on. Chair of the board Marisela Pesina closed the meeting shortly after the senator’s remarks. There were hundreds of parents waiting to speak who were outraged that such a proposal was made by their school board.
It is about time that one of our legislators took an interest in stopping these onerous gender identity rules from being pushed on our public schools. Parents are now becoming aware that our public education system is under fire by liberal factions that have been teaching our children and it looks like most parents are appalled at what they are learning.
We have seen how gender identity wokeism and leftist propaganda have infiltrated our Idaho schools’ curriculum. You can bet that the more funding we provide for public education, the more this leftist agenda will become part of our public-school curriculum. We need a way to afford our children the opportunity to get out of the public school system and find better conservative education opportunities in private and charter schools.
We need to empower parents by allowing them to choose school options that best suit their children. If those opportunities are Home Schooling then the parents should be compensated for the teaching they do with their children. Our legislature needs to create a way to shift money allocated for public education to private sector education dollar for dollar.
We have a governor who is obligated to the Teachers’ union that has supported him in his last two elections and he has become part of the problem in freeing up funds available for parents to have a choice besides public schools. The money to fund private education choices is there but is currently being squandered with as much as 30% of our education budget being sucked up and misallocated to administrators.
Idaho ranks near the bottom of the U.S. in terms of education. We also rank near the bottom in terms of high school and college graduation rates and that will not get better by throwing more money at a public system run by the Teachers Union. We also need to eliminate the Critical Race Theory being taught in our colleges as required courses. Our legislature needs to act in this next session and begin segregating funds that the state allocates to public financed colleges that require such courses and cut their budgets until they become more neutral in their curricula of what courses are required. If you have ever looked at how much college professors are paid, it would shock you and for years colleges have been raising tuition to the point where getting a college education is beyond the reach of many Idahoans.
During the special legislative session called by Governor Little, the Legislature passed funding for public education by budgeting an additional $330 million per year for K-12 public schools, and another $80 million for higher education. While the bill was bipartisan, there were still a handful of legislators who were adamantly against the passage of the bill until we stop teaching critical race theory. If you listen to the Teachers’ unions and the liberal media they will tell you that Idaho education is underfunded but if you do a little homework and read the research done by the Idaho Freedom Foundation, you will find that we are right up there with other states in compensation and benefits to our teachers.
Where everything gets cloudy is the huge amount of our education budget that goes to the administration of our education system. We have superintendents of some of our school districts making as much as $200,000 a year and if you do an audit of the budget you will find that almost 30% of our school budgets go to administration. Why so much to administer our schools? Good question but no one ever seems to answer this question. If you would like to take a look at some of the work generated on the cost of our education system, please visit this site presented by the Idaho Freedom Foundation as we believe you will find it quite enlightening. https://idahofreedom.org/idaho-k-12-education-fundingthere-is-plenty-of-money-to-educate-idahos-students/
While Idaho’s education performance in the context of the United States continues to improve there is still a huge question as to why (According to Wallet Hub) Idaho still ranks near the bottom of the US in terms of education. In terms of high school graduation rates, Idaho ranks 48th out of 50 states. In terms of college graduation rates, Idaho ranks 43rd out of 50 states. Folks we just threw another $300 million plus at public education for Idaho’s students, and we should be asking ourselves why we still have such a bad ranking for graduation. It is time we stopped throwing our tax money away and do some real auditing of our education system to find out just why we don’t seem to get the bang for our buck that other states are getting. I would suggest that we start with the 30% it costs us for the administration of our schools and have our new Attorney General Raul Labrador request an audit. We need to stop throwing money at Idaho’s public education system until we can determine just where and how our money is being spent.
We also need to stop the encroachment of the federal government into our education system with their memorandums of understanding which dictate the terms under which the money they give us can be spent. Much of the Wokeism and gender education that has been introduced to our public schools has come from these federal MOU’S and it needs to stop. Idaho gets 34% of its budget from the Federal government which means we are indentured servants to them. Our state is one of the richest in the country if you count our natural resources, but the government still controls 62% of Idaho’s land, keeping us from unleashing the huge economic force attached to those resources.
It is time we said “No More” to accepting the $32 million in PILT payments the Feds dole out to us every year as a token payment for sequestering 62% of our land and it has to stop. We need to take control of our land and tell the Federal Government that what they have been doing is unacceptable. We need to elect a legislature and a governor that will change the course of our state from one sucking on the government teat to one that is self-sufficient and needs no government funds. Can someone tell me why we have an Australian company mining Cobalt in our state one of the essential minerals used in electric car batteries? It is time to change course, my friends, but only you can do it through the voting process.
“We Get the Government We Deserve”
