BOISE, Idaho — Enrollment is dropping at public schools in Idaho. Some say they’re being funded like they should. We talked to the State Superintendent about that and a possible change that could be on the way.
Debbie Critchfield, Idaho's Superintendent of Public Instruction, said district leaders have a big worry right now when it comes to funding, specifically how it's calculated. "These are things that our school leaders are talking to me about all the time," Critchfield said.
During the pandemic, state funding was attached to how many kids were enrolled in a district. Now, they've gone back to determining funding by attendance: how many students are actually showing up to school. Unfortunately, Superintendent Critchfield said there's more of a relaxed attitude among parents when it comes to sending their kids to school now. That's a partial carryover from the pandemic, when students were encouraged to stay home for health reasons. But now, they're missing school for things like vacations.
That has District Leaders, like Dan Hollar with Boise Schools, sounding the alarm. "Even though we all went through the pandemic, and we pivoted to providing online learning, the importance of being in person is just so important from the standpoint of not only the academic benefits a student will acquire, but also the social skills as well."
It’s important for the student, but also the district’s funding. The more kids show up, the more money districts will get. But Critchfield said while schools want to enforce attendance standards, they also don't want to scare away parents, "Our schools are saying we have policies in place for attendance. But if we enforce those policies, the parents say, 'Whoa, we don't want to feel pressured about getting our kid to school, we're going to pull them out of this system. And we're going to put them into something else that doesn't have that pressure about having to be at school all of the time.’"
So, is there a chance Idaho returns to a funding model based on enrollment instead of attendance? Superintendent Critchfield told us, "I think it's always on the table. And we certainly hear our school folks talking about it. And it's not because they want to game the system. It's because whether or not the child is at school that day, you still have all the other students in the class and you still have fixed costs. The lights still have to be on. We're still going to pay for the heat, whether you've got 25 or 26 kids there."
That's not the only funding issue facing districts. The Kuna School District said they have to make cuts because their supplemental levy failed. West Ada said they would have had to make cuts if their supplemental levy failed. Essentially, the districts don't seem to be getting reliable, consistent state funding. That results in so much depending on them being able to win a levy election every two years.
According to the State Superintendent, it's a system that's not working how it's supposed to, "We need to have a way, a mechanism of distribution, where the school district doesn't have to go ask their local taxpayer for money to buy books. So supplemental levies should be supplemental. I don't think books are supplemental to the leveling. Now, if a district wants to go in and put turf on their football field, that's supplemental, but paying for a school nurse or a district nurse, I don't know that some of those things are considered supplemental anymore."
That's why Critchfield said districts need more freedom to spend their funding however they need to. "That doesn't mean dumping a bunch of new dollars into the system. Because when you look at it as a number, we say there's over two and a half billion dollars going into public schools. Well, let's allow districts to have local control over that. It's like our own budgets. When we feel like we have more access to our own money, we feel like we have more money without actually getting more."
Critchfield said the Department of Education is going to introduce some legislation next year that will allow for less-restrictive budget line items, so districts can have more of a say of how they spend their money.
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