Presentation of Idaho Reports on Idaho Public Television is made possible through the generous support of the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, committed to fulfilling the Moore and Bettis family legacy of building the great state of Idaho.

By the Friends of Idaho Public Television and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Supporters say it would give parents freedom and flexibility to choose education options that work for their families.

Opponents say it would siphon away desperately needed funds from the public school system.

After two days of testimony from all over the state.

Education savings accounts are on their way to the Senate floor.

Meanwhile, a bill to outlaw gender affirming care for transgender and non-binary minors has passed the house.

I'm Logan Finney, filling in for Melissa Davlin.

Idaho Reports starts now.

Hello and welcome to Idaho Reports.

This week I sit down with the chairman of the Senate Education Committee, Senator Dave Lent, and committee member Senator Lori Den Hartog, to talk about the $45 million education savings account bill that made it through the committee this week.

Then Kevin Richert of Idaho Education News and Kaye Thornbrugh of the Coeur d’Alene Press discuss a recent request to North Idaho College to show concrete evidence that its accreditation should not be revoked.

But first, let's get you caught up on the week.

On Thursday, Idaho's U.S.

Senator Jim Risch introduced a bipartisan resolution to recognize Russian actions in Ukraine, including the intentional killing of civilians as genocide against the people of Ukraine.

The resolution from Risch, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urges sanctions against the Russian government and criminal investigations into possible war crimes.

In Idaho legislative news, the House of Representatives on Tuesday passed a bill that would outlaw gender affirming medical care for transgender minors.

House Bill 71 would prohibit surgeries, hormone therapies and cross-sex medications, and providers of such care could face a ten year prison sentence.

>>Can parents and counselors decide to permanently deprive a minor of the right to procreate?

As protected by a constitution?

Before those children have legal capacity to consent to such things?

No.

Should not be.

There's a host of things that parents cannot consent to on behalf of a child.

They should not be allowed to consent to the sterilization of another human being, even if it's their own child.

>>The parents of gender diverse kids are loving parents.

They are generally learning as they go on this journey.

And it's really this journey demonstrates that they are open to what their children are experiencing and that something wonderful is happening in these families where children can approach their parents and tell them about this scary thing that they're experiencing.

And it's something that can be hard to talk about.

So when we talk about these parents, they're open, loving and really trying to do the best for their kids.

>>I am conflicted with this bill because there's too many parts in it.

If it just said, let's let's not allow the surgery, my green lights on very quickly and that's an easy decision.

But when I'm taking away these the parent’s rights and that's what we fight so desperately and we say the parents have unalienable rights to to make decisions for their children.

But now since we we don't understand or we don't like this topic, we're going to say no parents, I'm sorry, we are the legislature and we know more.

We know better what is important and what your child needs.

And that bothers me greatly.

>>There is no one else who is better suited to make a decision about what is right for a particular child than the parent and I support that principle wholeheartedly.

I also believe that there are circumstances where even a parent does not have authority, and we see those examples in our state statutes prohibiting physical abuse and other types of harm.

Specific harm to a child.

>>The bill moves on to the Senate following a 58 to 12 vote with just one Republican Representative Matt Bundy of Mountain Home siding with the Democrats in opposition.

On Wednesday, following two days of lengthy testimony, the Senate Education Committee approved a bill to establish an education savings account program.

Senate Bill 1038 would allow the parents of students not enrolled in the K-12 school system to access state education funds that typically go to public schools.

One size of education does not fit all children.

This is true.

I like what some of these people have said.

Parents should be allowed to use their own tax dollars.

How they choose.

This is also so true, and freedom of choice is constitutional.

Contrary to the argument, the education savings accounts funds the few, education savings accounts, vouchers allow choice for all Idaho students, not just those whose parents can afford private schools.

>>This bill, like most voucher schemes, leaves no accountability or recourse to the taxpayers on how millions of their dollars are spent.

Private schools and vendors do not answer to elected officeholders such as school board members and state lawmakers.

Elected officials are typically taxpayer’s most direct check and balance on how their taxpayer dollars are spent.

Despite what has been said about accountability, you'll notice that nowhere in this bill is there any accountability for the private schools and vendors that will receive millions in taxpayer dollars.

I can't remember a time that this legislature gave away millions of dollars without any accountability.

>>Those who select private or homeschool have made a choice that their children face no uniform standard of growth.

Their schooling is subject to no scrutiny.

They face no penalties to their children, not demonstrate actual learning.

Whereas our public schools face multiple layers of accountability, including from this body.

This, though, is a simple question of this body now deciding that those who choose private or homeschool don't have to face the consequences or challenges of those choices.

>>When you engage a free market, you actually have a plethora of different possibilities of how you might use funds.

The idea of an ESA is exactly that it isn't a voucher and it isn't a public school.

It's an opportunity for the market to supply options to students based on their needs.

Here's the thing about markets.

This is why I love the free markets system.

Markets drive quality up and costs down.

>>The parents are directing.

These are directing these funds.

So as long as the money flows to private or religious schools or religious private schools, whatever you want to call them, as a result of the parents choosing where to send their child, that program is constitutional.

And if a state chooses to subsidize private private education.

Now, the Supreme Court didn't say they had to.

They just said it was allowable.

If a state if a state chooses to subsidize private education, it cannot exclude religious schools simply because they are religious school or instruct from a religious viewpoint.

Because as our Supreme Court justices said, that does violate the First Amendment and can be seen as religious discrimination.

Senate Education Chairman Senator Dave Lent and committee member Senator Lori Den Hartog joined me on Friday afternoon to discuss the bill and the evolution of school choice in Idaho.

Senator Lent, Senator Den Hartog, thanks so much for joining us this week.

There was a lot of testimony over two days.

We heard from over 100 people across the two hearings.

Senator Lent, what testimony from the hearings was most impactful to you personally?

>>Well, I really enjoyed the diversity of people that we heard from.

A homeschooler with her five boys crawling on her.

That was so fun.

And then, you know, the retired school teachers and administrators and just regular folks, you know, calling in and and wanting to express their opinion and their thoughts on a very important subject, which is, of course, how we fund education.

>>Of course, Senator Den Hartog, what stood out to you from testimony?

>>I think similar to Senator Lent, just the diversity of testimony.

And I think we have seen how testimony has changed over the last several years with the advent of having people be able to zoom in to our meetings.

And that has given a lot of life to the testimony.

It's not just the people in the audience.

It's this, you know, balance between, you know, getting to hear from people all across the state versus people that are able to join us in person.

>>Of course.

And ESA’s are a topic that is, they’re not just on the table in Idaho.

It's a conversation that's happening all over the country.

This is a program that's established based somewhat on other states.

Senator Lent, went before the committee vote.

You said something along the lines of this bill is going 0 to 60.

What did you mean by that?

And can you tell me some of your concerns about the legislation?

>>Sure.

Chairman Yamamoto and I had the opportunity to go to Arizona.

Arizona is referred to as like the model.

And when it comes to choice, education and we had the good fortune to sit down with one of the lead legislators who championed and has for many years their legislation.

And one of the things he communicated to us was it's a process and a journey.

This particular thing.

And it it really sunk in.

As this piece of legislation that we have before us now, it really is starts where Arizona is now and moves even further forward.

So there really isn't any warm up to this, so to speak, at least in my perspective.

And I think to have success in this, the leadership principle is you want to bring people along with you.

And the way this came off, at least a current legislation and from my perspective, it didn't allow for that.

It was here it is, Here we go.

Here's the whole enchilada.

And off we go.

>>And Senator Den Hartog, you voted in favor of the bill in support of it, but you talked about some differences that you would have made if you had drafted the legislation.

Can you tell me about that?

>>Yeah.

So similar to Senator Lent and the idea that there is that there is a process and we take incremental steps.

What we've seen in other states is this and more incremental approach.

And so some of the things in the legislation that I thought, you know, maybe that again, had, I drafted it, I wouldn't have included , it.

The legislation allowed rollover of the savings to be able to pay for college expenses or tuition.

We have some programs that address some of that now, and we're talking about others.

The other consideration, I think transportation is an eligible expense.

I heard that come up as that wasn't one that I was necessarily concerned about.

And then the idea that it was immediately open to all families.

And, you know, my primary concern has been for this for the families that don't have choice right now, how can we help them have some of the opportunities that families with means already have?

And I think that's part of how I would have structured it differently.

Similar to our Empowering Parents current micro grant program, where the money goes out, anyone can apply, but the money goes out based on your income levels and it addresses those in the lower to middle income levels first and sends money to them first.

>>And so with those qualifiers acknowledged, what pushed you to a yes vote.

>>Yeah.

This has been a space that I've worked in for a long time and I feel very, very passionately about.

Not everybody has arrived at the same place at the same time, and that's normal in this legislative process.

I think, you know, what I've been reading in news reports, people are like, Oh, it's all this national push, these outside forces and outside entities.

And I'd be like, Wait a minute, There's been those of us in school choice working in this arena in the state for a long time, and we've been making those incremental steps.

So maybe we didn't have some of the same things in place that Arizona had had or other states have had for a while.

But for me, this is the right moment and the right time, even if it isn't exactly what I would have drafted myself.

>>And the the Arizona ESA program, which this is partially based on, began specifically as a program for special education and special needs and students with disabilities.

That was a topic that came up a lot over the course of the testimony.

Chairman Lent, what did the issues around disabilities, how how did that weigh into your calculation?

Well, there was a lot of uncertainty in the testimony.

People were testifying that it was going to be a difference.

It wasn't going to be a difference.

Certain schools did it, Certain other schools didn't.

The federal programs, if they're not part of the private school, then they're not going to be part of the program.

So my what I'd really say is that we need to have apples for apples here, and that is if we're going to allow money to go outside of the public system currently, then we should expect the same kind of services and other things provided by those schools as well.

Likewise, the inverse of that would be would, since this particular program has no requirements for reporting back, no accountability associated with it, the inverse of that would be, well, could we say that our current public system no longer requires any reporting back on student achievement as well?

I think if we if we looked at it from that perspective, many people would say, no, no, no, that's not what we want to do.

So while I am a I think I have always been in favor of finding the right situation for students.

When I was on the school board in Idaho Falls, we brought in a we took a junior high and converted it into a project based high school because we felt like our students and parents needed more flexibility and options.

We wanted the right fit and we knew that there are many situations that traditional, comprehensive high schools weren't meeting for a certain number of students.

So, you know, when you talk about the different options we have, you know, from career technical, just in my district in Idaho Falls career technical alternative, high schools, comprehensive high schools, the middle schools that specialize in different things as well as well as private schools.

And we have very successful charter schools in our district as well.

Alturist Academy and American Heritage both are very successful and growing.

>>There are a lot of choices within the existing public system that Idaho has set up.

Senator Den Hartog School choice has been part of your legislative wheelhouse for your tenure in the Senate.

Tell me about how the conversation around school choice has changed over the years.

>>We've tried a lot of different things.

We've tried bringing a lot of different legislation and we've had a lot of success and we've had some failures along the way, too.

Some of those were things that other states have been successful in.

Several years ago, we had an attempt to track a tax credit scholarship program that ultimately was not something that made it across the finish line.

But we've had a lot of success, particularly around the the charter school space.

And people forget that those are public schools.

And we've seen a lot of innovation and a lot of creativity.

One of the things that struck me about the conversation that I think we're missing is we are, as we're talking about something like an ESA, I think we're so focused on what currently exists, we forget that this has the potential to really unleash innovation and creativity in a way that we maybe don't even understand yet.

And we saw some of that in the pandemic with micro schools or families joining together, some of these things that we just had never even considered as a possibility.

And I think that's what's exciting to me in this choice space is what what's going to happen that we don't even know exists yet.

And and that is really exciting to me.

>> that really was a similar conversation when we had the charter school debate over 20 years ago.

People were afraid.

They were worried it was going to damage our existing traditional public schools.

And we haven't seen that happen.

But we've seen a lot of creativity and a lot of innovation.

>>I want to move now to the question of the price tag for the program.

The sponsors are asking for about $45 million to start this up.

An earlier version of the bill would have covered fewer students for a smaller price tag.

Senator Lent, what do you think of the calculations going into this?

And what do you think?

We'll see with this program if it were to continue into the future?

There are questions about how much the costs may increase.

>>Well, that's a great question.

So a lot of what we've seen has to do with the initial start up.

And what I've tried to do is look at five years down the road and look at those states Indiana, Arizona, Wisconsin, Ohio, and see where they are now that they have some run time on them and maybe learn from their experience as well, benchmark them.

And what we're seeing is that it's really in the hundreds of millions of dollars that's being spent.

Additionally.

And while I support the idea right, where I struggle is initially the narrative and the concept is that people will move to these better schools when in reality the existing schools don't close down.

And a lot of the students that participate in these programs are already in private schools to start with.

So there's a smaller majority of students who are moving, although we do have students moving from the public system, a large share of the students are already in private schools.

So you end up essentially and that's I guess if you were to ask me why did I vote no, it goes something like this.

You end up essentially creating a dual system there.

Another system of schools that you are now funding, which gets very expensive in the long run.

So so that's the question.

And, you know, if there's I do believe that there is some room here.

You know, if you lead into that question, you know, where do we go from here?

Uh, and I think there is a space where this could come together and there could be a solution.

The good senator and I just had a meeting here over the lunch hour, talking with others about opportunities to bring some of the best of the best together in some of our programs and see if there isn't somewhere in the middle that we can meet so that we can satisfy what we're trying to do at the same time, maintain some accountability, maintain some consistency, but allow the innovation and flexibility that I think we all seek as well.

>>Sure.

Let's let's talk about that innovation a little bit.

There are the existing school choice options within the public school system like charters, etc.

an ESA program would maybe open some more options outside of the system.

Senator Den Hartog, at what point will we know we've done it and we have enough school choice?

I think when we hear from parents and families that they're satisfied, I think we have I think most people are happy with their public schools.

I don't think there's I don't we haven't heard an outcry.

But what we have heard and I heard this from constituents throughout the pandemic primarily who when they had their eyes opened and had kind of were forced into another option through that time, some of that schooling at home, they were like, oh, we could do this.

This would be great.

I had never thought about doing it, I never thought it was possible.

I and education is changing and I think we if we talk about like the unbundling of education like let's there are we and we know this intuitively that how we learn and where we learn it can happen in so many different ways.

And I feel like we've tried to restrict it to these to these walls or to this box.

and that's where it's difficult to kind of come out of that and see what that looks and feels like.

And it's a little scary.

It's a little unknown.

>>Of course.

>>But I would say we may never know.

And I hope we always continue to innovate in education.

Education should be leading the pack in innovation.

Joining me to discuss this week in education, we're joined by Kevin Richert of Idaho Education News and Kaye Thornbrugh of the Coeur d’Alene Press.

Kevin, Kaye, thanks for joining us.

Let's start with education savings accounts.

Kevin, that was a lot of testimony over the last two days.

What stood out the most to you?

>>Well, I think on the one hand, you look at this and you say that this was an anticlimactic, predictable hearing because five of the nine senators had already signed on as sponsors and co-sponsors.

So we knew how the outcome was going to be.

But a couple of things really stood out to me.

First of all, you heard Chairman Dave Lent vote against the bill in committee, and he kind of tipped off that maybe there are other education savings accounts or school choice bills in the hopper that might be that might not go as far as this bill, which went too far for his liking.

So kind of a tip off that this debate is going to be a long debate and that there's stuff going on behind the scenes.

But I was struck to as we sat there for the 6 hours of listening to the public testimony about the scope of what we heard.

We heard from folks all over the state.

And I think this is a time where that remote testimony really paid dividends.

We heard from folks from all over the state and really some thoughtful, interesting comments about neighborhood schools, the importance of local schools, the role of local schools and how people define education.

I thought it was a really interesting debate.

>>Definitely.

And the support and opposition didn't map neatly onto whether they were speaking from a city like Coeur d’Alene or Idaho Falls or a small town like Genesee or Viola.

>>And we heard voices from all over the state, we heard from folks from Post Falls all the way to Idaho Falls.

It was really it was a good discussion.

>>And, Kaye, I want to bring you into the conversation now.

You covered a town hall meeting up in Coeur d’Alene in early February and ESA’s were a big topic up there.

Can you tell me about what you heard from the constituents in Kootenai County?

>>Yes, it was a very well-attended town hall meeting.

About 200 folks turned up and by far the most asked topic was about ESA’s.

Most of the commentary from the audience was in support of this concept, and the ten legislators who were in attendance expressed universal support for this idea.

>>All right.

Well, the statehouse isn't the only education topic in the news this week.

North Idaho College, again up in Kootenai County, received a letter last Thursday from its accrediting accrediting body, the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities.

That letter directs the community college to show concrete evidence that it is taking steps to address the commission's concerns about financial stability, governance, turbulence in the last couple of years.

Kevin, briefly remind us, what is accreditation and what does it mean for a community college?

>>It means a lot to students.

What it means to students is their credits are if they want to move from one college to another and you want to have your credits honored by another institution, you have to be going through a college and accredited.

So for an NIC student, whether they're seeking an associate's degree and hoping to go on to a four year school or whether they're a dual credit student hoping to take credits from their high school career into college, they have to be going to an accredited school.

So that's what's critically important for students and also students who want to get an opportunity scholarship or a state scholarship.

They have to be going to an accredited school.

So for students, this is a big deal.

>>And Kaye, you, I believe, broke the story on this show cause letter.

Can you explain to me what exactly this letter signifies?

Is the next step in this accreditation process?

>>This show called Letter or Sanction, came a little more than two months after a warning that it could be coming.

It is the last step before loss of accreditation, before North Idaho College.

And at this point NIC has until March 13 to submit a report to the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, essentially explaining and outlining why it should not have its accreditation terminated.

At that point, that report is going to be followed by a site visit from the NWCCU and we should expect to hear a decision sometime in June.

>>And I, for context here, the last time that we had you on the show was back in November, just after the last board of trustee elections.

So there's there's a lot that has happened up there since we last talked to you.

Remind us how the trustee elections went and what has happened in the months since then.

>>Right.

Well, we had three new trustees join the board.

at election kind of flipped the balance of power to a three trustees on one side, two trustees on the other side.

Since then, we have seen a lot of changes at NIC.

The newly hired permanent president, Nick Swain, has been placed on administrative leave, not for any disciplinary reason, but so that the college's new attorney can investigate a change to his contract that occurred in August after his hiring.

He has since sued to be reinstated.

There is an additional lawsuit pending from a community member here in Coeur d’Alene against the board of trustees accusing malfeasance and fraud.

And all of this has culminated in that additional warning from the NWCCU and now that sanction of show cause.

>>Right.

Kevin, let's go back to you.

All of these factors compounding our kind of what NWCCU is pointing to that, that is making them concerned about the state of the college.

>>I was struck by two things last week.

I was struck by the tone of the letter from NWCCU.

Very, very stern tone here.

Basically, the commission is saying we don't think the college is taking this matter seriously enough.

We don't think that they're really taking seriously the threat to accreditation.

And then I was struck by the response that we saw from the interim president, Gregory South, just the next day saying we're running out of second chances here as a community and as a board of trustees.

We have to get our act together and we have to get it together here in the next few months.

Very different tone from him than we heard just last month when he was before the Joint Finance Appropriations Committee down here, down here in Boise at the state House, where he basically said, we'll have time to respond.

This is a long process.

He basically told me afterwards.

If you're a student right now at NIC you have nothing to worry about because you will have your associate's degree in place before this accreditation could ever be pulled.

Very different tone, very much more of a sense of urgency from him.

>>And Kaye, remind us, the trustees up there.

Remind us what their stance toward the accreditation issue has been and tell us if that's changed at all since this letter was received.

>>Right.

Three of the trustees on the NIC board, Todd Banducci, board chair Greg McKenzie, and newly elected trustee Mike Wagner, have really consistently maintained that NIC’s accreditation is not in danger.

It's never been in danger.

That this talk about accreditation and those concerns were kind of campaign rhetoric leading up toward the election.

Since the sanction from the NWCCU they have not issued any type of statement, they have not addressed this letter, specifically as trustees in any way.

We'll have to leave it there.

Kaye Thornbrugh from the Coeur d’Alene Press.

Kevin Richert, Idaho Education News, thanks for joining us.

Thank you so much for watching.

And we'll see you next week.

Presentation of Idaho Reports on Idaho Public Television is made possible through the generous support of the Laura Moore Cunningham Foundation, committed to fulfilling the Moore and Bettis family legacy of building the great state of Idaho.

By the Friends of Idaho Public Television and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.