<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; ">Courtesy of today's (August 26, 2013) Lewiston Tribune.</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><br></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; ">---------------------------------------</div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><br></div><div><span class="paragraph0" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0); -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; "><p style="margin-top: 0px; "><h1 id="blox-asset-title" style="font-size: 30px; outline: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-weight: normal; font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 34px; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-align: left; "><span class="blox-headline entry-title" style="outline: 0px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(204, 0, 0); line-height: 38px; font-family: TiresiasInfofontRegular, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; ">What a concept - Idaho schools need money</span></h1></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; ">Marty Trilhasse</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; ">Ever since Idahoans elected him to guide their public school system, Superintendent Tom Luna has refused to talk about the elephant in the room.</p></span><div class="encrypted-content"><p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">That would be, ahem, money.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content"><p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">As in the lack of it.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content"><p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">He's been willing to talk about anything and everything else.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content"><p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Test scores.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content"><p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Standards.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content"><p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Accountability.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content"><p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Technology in the classroom.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content"><p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Gutting teacher collective bargaining rights.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content"><p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Merit pay for teachers.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content"><p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">But as Idaho lawmakers - under the protective cover of a national recession - whacked away at school budgets, there was hardly a whimper. Even today, five years after the economy collapsed, the state spends $110 million less on its public schools.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content"><p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">No protest at all about Idaho's perennial 50th place -out of 51 including Washington, D.C. - in per-pupil expenditures. At $6,824, Idaho is 35.4 percent below the national average and only Utah spends less.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content"><p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Did you hear Luna respond to the new Education Week rankings - which give Idaho the nation's lowest marks on school finance? Idaho's score - 61.2 - was more than 10 points behind Washington and nearly 15 points below the national average.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content"><p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Didn't think so.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content"><p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Of course, there's been silence from the superintendent's office as former Idaho Chief Economist Mike Ferguson documented the Legislature's retreat from its constitutional duty to pay for schools. Since the start of the century, the share of Idaho's personal income devoted to public education has dropped more than 20 percent - or about $500 million a year - while taxes for the well-to-do and politically influential have been cut.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content"><p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">When voters rejected Luna's school overhaul package last fall, he lost control of the education agenda. Gov. C.L. (Butch) Otter put that in the hands of a 31-member task force.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content"><p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Friday, that panel plainly repudiated six years of Lunaism. It said the school system needs more money:</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content"><ul><li><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">$82.5 million just to restore cuts in the discretionary accounts schools use to pay the bills - from lights to textbooks. Five years ago, they got the equivalent of $25,696 per classroom; now it's down to $20,000. And some districts have run out of wiggle room. Without more dollars - either from the state or voter-approved supplemental property tax increases - staffs will be cut and more students will be crowded into fewer classrooms.</span></li><li><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">$253.8 million for teacher pay. That's what it would cost to bring starting salaries up to $40,000 and pay senior teachers as much as $60,000. Eye-popping, maybe. But that's what it's going to take to attract and retain quality teachers to a state that has demonstrated a marked hostility toward their profession. As the Idaho Legislature's Office of Performance Evaluations reported earlier this year, Idaho suffers from "a strong undercurrent of despair among teachers who seem to perceive a climate that disparages their efforts and belittles their contributions. The vast majority ... express concerns or dissatisfaction with certain aspects of their work or, more broadly, with conditions surrounding the public education environment in Idaho. ... The general tone of dissatisfaction and sense of being unappreciated may ... directly affect the state's ability to ensure a steady supply of dedicated, highly effective teachers in all of Idaho's public schools."</span></li></ul></div><div class="encrypted-content"><p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Not all that long ago, state superintendents such as Jerry Evans or Marilyn Howard pointed out the shortcomings in school spending. So did State Board of Education members such as Janet Hay of Nampa or Mike Mitchell of Lewiston. Not to mention education supporters in the Legislature, such as former Sens. John Hansen, R-Idaho Falls, or Laird Noh, R-Kimberly.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content"><p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Idahoans were told forthrightly what it would cost them to provide their children with a sound education. Whether Idahoans chose to follow this advice was up to them. At least, they were informed.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content"><p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">Now that message - long bottled up by Luna and his lieutenants - is front and center again, thanks to a task force willing to confront it.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content"><p><span style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">There's just one problem.</span></p><p><div class="encrypted-content"><p><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">To sell it, they'll need an education advocate at the state level.</span></p></div><div class="encrypted-content"><p><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0);">And at the moment, Idaho doesn't have one. - M.T.</span></p></div></p></div></div><div style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; ">---------------------------------------<br><br><div>Seeya 'round town, Moscow, because . . .</div><div><br></div><div>"Moscow Cares" (the most fun you can have with your pants on)</div><div><a href="http://www.MoscowCares.com">http://www.MoscowCares.com</a></div><div> </div><div><div>Tom Hansen</div><div>Moscow, Idaho</div><div><br></div><div>"<span style="font-size: medium; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); ">There's room at the top they are telling you still</span><span style="font-size: medium; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); "> </span></div><span style="font-size: medium; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); ">But first you must learn how to smile as you kill </span><br style="font-size: medium; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); "><span style="font-size: medium; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.296875); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); ">If you want to be like the folks on the hill."</span></div><div><font size="3"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469);"><br></span></font></div><div><font size="3"><span style="-webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969); -webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469);">- John Lennon<br></span></font><div> </div></div><div><br></div></div></body></html>