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Idaho superintendent proposes new public school budget

The proposed budget looks to fill a $162 million hole of funding previously dedicated to education that was lost during a transition in school funding formulas.

BOISE, Idaho — With the Idaho legislative session starting on Monday, new state budgets will outline how our elected officials spend your taxpayer money, which includes funding for Idaho's Classrooms.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Debbie Critchfield is proposing a budget that would fill a $162 million hole from a recent change in the public school funding formula with state money that has already been allocated for education.  

Superintendent Critchfield is calling the proposed budget a "modernization" of the state's public school funding.

"We want a student-centered system," Critchfield said. "Making sure that our students and our parents feel as though they have access to the resources that they need so that their child is prepared is important. Well, we want to balance that with being reasonable and conservative on how we approach how much taxes go into that effort."

In total, the proposed public school budget is a 2.9% increase from last year's budget. 

"We got to that number looking at a variety of things, a lot of those increases come in the line item of transportation," Critchfield said. "We know fuel costs are up, it just costs more to transport our kids."

Critchfield said the budget places an emphasis on allowing districts to have more local control over the money they receive from the state.

A portion of the budget is also looking at a model using outcome-based funding.

"Outcome based funding is an approach - it's not a new model to the finance world, but it definitely is a new approach to K-12," Critchfield said. "We're looking at tying monies to outcomes in math for our kids."

Over the past few years, the formula for funding public schools in Idaho has changed. The Gem State has based school funding on attendance, but when COVID happened - the state switched to enrollment-based funding. 

That funding formula recently reverted back to being attendance-based, which left a $162 million discrepancy between the two funding formulas. 

Critchfield's proposed budget includes a line item that would allow districts to capture the money that was left on the table - which was already budgeted for education. 

"We're not talking about new money," Critchfield said. "This money was already appropriated last year, but districts weren't able to access it because we returned to a formula-based way of funding schools...That money was intended to go to public schools, we still want it to go there. There's an avenue and a mechanism to get that done, and we need the legislature to approve that."

The proposed budget was submitted in September. With the legislative session right around the corner, it will soon go to Governor Brad Little's office for possible recommendations. Ultimately, the budget will go to the legislature's finance committee, and then will be voted on by the state legislature - likely toward the end of the session. 

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