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.

For decades, much of the discussion around higher education has focused on universities.

But the Idaho Department of Labor is trying to show kids that there are other options, like apprenticeships, and they're using a unique way to reach them.

I'm Melissa Davlin.

Idaho reports starts now.

Hello and welcome to Idaho Reports.

This week, Kevin Richert of Idaho Education News joins us to discuss the latest with North Idaho College.

Plus more on what the conversation around school choice might look like this upcoming legislative session.

Then director Jani Revier of the Idaho Department of Labor sits down with me to talk about the department's efforts to educate students about apprenticeship programs.

But first, on Monday, the Idaho State Historical Society unveiled a new statue commemorating women's rights in front of the Capitol.

Idaho was the fourth state in the country to grant women the right to vote in 1896.

Boise Artist Irene Deeley designed the sculpture, which features women's shoes from different eras of Idaho's history, according to the Idaho Capitol Sun.

The State Historical Society initially planned to unveil the statue in 2020, but COVID 19 put a hold on those plans.

On Thursday, the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare held a press briefing about the simultaneous surge of three separate respiratory viruses.

Flu, RSV and COVID 19.

The spread has pushed hospitals in Idaho and across the West to the brink, especially in pediatric wards, as RSV in particular disproportionately affects very young children.

I’m worried that Idahoans do not understand the large impact these three viral diseases are having on our hospital capacity, which affects all patient care.

We have seen a surge in people who need care in hospitals because they are really sick, particularly after the Thanksgiving holiday.

Let me be clear.

Hospitals across the state are full and under a tremendous amount of stress following the Christmas and New Year holidays.

We expect to see another surge in hospitalized patients.

A post holiday surge is very concerning, particularly when hospitals are already operating at the edge of their capacity.

We've moved past normal operations and we're in what we call contingency operations.

That's the kind of it's not quite the crisis, but we're doing things that are not normal and that always puts us at risk.

If we see a significant surge that it is possible we could get there.

Again, we hope we don't, but we're prepared to act if we do.

Hospital census across the Pacific Northwest has been at or near capacity over this same period of time.

And over the past few months, our health system has had transfers in from as far away as Sitka, Alaska, multiple from there, from the Oregon coast and from Northern California.

The things we're doing to manage this surge and the really high volumes that we're contending with right now, a whole bunch of adjustments.

And frankly, they're all pretty similar to the sorts of things you saw us doing during the COVID surges.

This includes changing nursing ratios, caring for certain patients in different units than we usually would.

Pulling in additional help to support the provider workforce.

So advanced practice providers PA’s and NP’s from other pediatric duties being pulled in to support inpatient care and they've been amazing.

You will experience very busy emergency departments, crowded waiting rooms.

Everyone will be wearing a mask, but they are crowded.

You'll experience longer waits because of that.

If you need to be admitted to the hospital, you might experience needing to board in the emergency department, which means spending more time in the emergency department before we are able to open up a hospital bed.

Your care might occur in a different place.

The drugs and supplies we use might be different, and we might even need to cancel elective surgeries.

We had to do this in pediatrics this week, something we really want to avoid.

Joining us to discuss the next few months of education policy debates is Kevin Richert of Idaho Education News.

Kevin, thanks so much for joining us.

Let's start with North Idaho College.

We talked to you a few weeks ago about the results of the trustee election in October sorry, November.

What has happened since then?

A lot and a lot that we kind of could have expected to see happen.

The the balance of power shifted with those November elections.

And already we've seen a lot of turmoil at North Idaho College.

The recently hired president, Nick Swain, has been placed on administrative leave.

This all goes back to trustees say this goes back to a change in the contract that took place that was executed in September.

We've seen Art Macomber, who was, you know, a former attorney general's candidate, appointed fairly abruptly as counsel to North Idaho College.

We have seen an attempt, a failed attempt to bring Michael Sebaaly, the wrestling coach, turned interim president, back to NIC on an acting basis.

Right now, North Idaho College has no president.

They have a new attorney who is kind of a polarizing figure.

You have sharp divisions within the board, Melissa.

None of this is normal.

Let's let's just take a step back.

But this is not normal politics.

You know, this is very polarized.

And this has been what we've seen at North Idaho College now for more than a year.

You know, Idahoans like to talk about how we don't do politics here like they do it back in D.C.. You know, it's not like Congress where every two years there's a potential changeover in power and one side tries to get it over on the other side.

That's exactly what's happened at North Idaho College.

And you could have seen this all coming.

This is not normal.

And the stakes are really high because North Idaho colleges enrollment continues to decline.

Its accreditation is in question.

All of this would be great political theater if the stakes for higher education in the Idaho Panhandle weren't so profound.

Let's talk a little bit about the meeting that happened last Saturday.

That was not a normal meeting.

That was quite a notable meeting, both in how the board acted and the board chair acted as well as how the community members who attended acted as well.

I watched it via Zoom Saturday night.

I watched it again on Monday.

It's embarrassing.

It really is.

You have to just put it in those terms to have this kind of a trustee meeting with the stakes this high and to have it break down into this chaos and discord.

It's embarrassing.

And if you're wondering why parents and students are a little bit gun shy about attending North Idaho College, that's a pretty good illustration as to why.

What exactly happened with the break down for people who didn't read about the meeting and what happened?

Well, nothing happened really in terms of policy because the hope the majority of the trustees, the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee, aligned trustees, were hoping that they could bring Sebaaly back as acting president.

They had made overtures to Sebaaly about his return.

He turned them down.

He said, I don't feel like I'd have the unanimous support of the trustees, and he probably wouldn't have.

So he turned it down.

So you have no acting president.

You have no president at all.

There was a brief motion made by Terry Zimmerman, one of the new trustees, who's not aligned with the Central Committee.

She said, well, why don't we just bring back Nick Swain and have him be president as he was hired to do back in June.

That didn't go anywhere.

So right now you've got this power vacuum.

Those trustees are scheduled to meet, I believe it's Wednesday is their next meeting.

So we'll we'll see what unfolds there.

And you not only had the breakdown of the meeting agenda itself, but you also had this interplay between the trustees and the community members who attended and a lot of disruption.

It was a very it was a dysfunctional meeting, to say the very least about it.

And there was a lot of back and forth between the audience and trustees, namely Todd Banducci, you know, embarrassing is really the only word I keep going back to.

And watching it from afar.

You know, I'm really curious.

I'd love to get the unfiltered opinion of state leaders as they watch this unfold, because right now the state leaders aren't saying a whole lot and they're saying that they really have very little control over what's happening with this locally elected board.

Real quick before we go to state leadership.

You know, looking in your crystal ball for the next few months, what is this ruckus in the meeting signal for the board's ability to govern in the short term?

I think the thing to really watch for, because I would imagine that meetings are going to continue to be pretty much about as ugly as they've been so far, these three meetings we saw last week.

I can't imagine that there's going to be much change in the way the board comports itself.

The thing to watch for is come spring when accreditors come back to look at North Idaho College.

You know, there's been a lot of debate not only about, well, how serious is the threat to accreditation?

Well, you know, there was a warning that was issued last spring.

I don't think regional accreditor's just do that on a whim and they are coming back in the spring.

It'll be really interesting and really crucial to see what happens when the accreditors return and how that plays out.

Why does accreditation matter?

It affects students more profoundly than any of the students function that we're seeing at the board meetings.

This really this is where the rubber hits the road for students.

If you are a student and you're going to an unaccredited institution, you can't transfer those credits to another institution.

You can't qualify for financial aid, such as state aid, such as the opportunity scholarships the college students across the state get.

You can't get that if you're going to an unaccredited institution and those high school students that are supposed to be taking dual credit classes to try to get a leg up and get prepared for college while those dual credit classes, they don't transfer any place either if they're taken through an unaccredited institution.

So accreditation really, really matters to students.

What are you hearing from the state board and the governor's office?

Not very much.

So the state board is saying they're monitoring the situation.

They're saying that really the day to day governance falls to the board of trustees.

And there's a little bit different tone from the state board than I was hearing a year ago, a year ago, when this whole issue started to flare up in the first place.

State Board sent a pretty pointed letter to NIC trustees saying basically, get your act together.

We can't afford to have accreditation in jeopardy.

And yes, we have no direct governance over a community college, but we have a legal and moral obligation to watch what's happening.

You know, it's a really interesting situation, Melissa, because you do have these locally elected trustees.

It is local control in a state that preaches local control.

But this is community colleges are funded not only by local taxpayers, locally, local property owners.

And that's why you have an elected board of trustees.

And they're not only funded through tuition and fees that students and parents pay, but community colleges like NIC get a fraction of their money from the state general fund.

So the state board, the governor's office, the newly elected state superintendent, they've got some skin in the game here, too, but they don't have a whole lot of control over what's happening.

Well, let's talk about that state funding for a little bit.

You know, we know that the Joint Finance Appropriation Committee’s, budget hearing schedule is set.

Any indication how this might affect those budget talks for NIC come January, February.

I will be really curious to see what sort of reception NIC gets.

I'll be curious to see who makes the presentation of NIC’s budget, because who exactly is going to be president, acting president, interim president, whatever title you attach.

Who's going to be standing before JFAC making that presentation a year ago?

It was Michael Sebaaly in his interim role.

It was a strange hearing, Melissa, because I kept sitting there waiting.

Well, somebody is going to bring up all of this stuff that's going on in NIC right?

It really didn't come up.

The closest it came up.

Paul Amador, who was then a representative then on JFAC, said, yeah, it's been a difficult time for.

NIC, we're kind of hoping for the best.

I mean, kind of stating the obvious.

I will be really interested to see if this new JFAC with all these new members, if anybody asks pointed questions about, well, you know, what's going on up there and how should we approach our end of the funding equation, given what's going on up there?

Not only a whole lot of new Joint Finance Appropriations Committee members, but also a lot of new lawmakers in general from the Coeur d’Alene area.

That that's going to be an interesting discussion moving forward.

You know, let's also talk about University of Idaho.

We know that for the end of fall semester, many students opted to attend classes remotely because of the four brutal murders of students in early November.

It's been more than a month now.

There has been no more public movement, so much on the case.

That doesn't mean that police haven't made progress.

But the bottom line is we don't know if they have a suspect or if a suspect will be in custody by the time spring semester starts.

Any indication how many students might come back for in-person classes in the spring?

That's going to be really interesting to to see.

And a really a difficult personal decision for students and for parents to make the U of I came out earlier this week with a memo and hoping that students return, saying that they will have enhanced security on campus.

It was a little bit unclear exactly how classes will unfold.

The memo that went out to students on Monday indicated that they're hoping that, you know, classes will resume as planned and perhaps there will be more of an online auction.

The Idaho Statesman reported later in the week, later this week that a memo to faculty indicated that U of I is really going to try to move away from moving classes online.

So a little bit uncertain at this point what classes exactly are going to look like, what how professors and students work this all out.

But you're asking the question, I'm going to be really curious to see the answer to how many students come back when they've had a chance to, you know, take a break from one semester to the next and decide whether they want to come back for spring semester.

So based on what we know right now about the investigation, how how students and parents make that really, really difficult decision.

Because the crime occurred off campus.

Any indication what security might look like on campus?

Definitely going to be more of an enhanced security presence.

And I think it's going to be a combination of.

It sounds like the university is going to increase its own in-house security, but they're also going to get some help from law enforcement, which they've been getting over these past few weeks, like Idaho State Police, for example, has had a much more visible presence on campus these past few weeks.

This week, we also heard a lot about the school choice debate, the Mountain State's Policy Center, based in north Idaho as well, put out a poll that in which they talked about many other things, but Idahoans reactions to public money going for homeschool or private school options for students who might not otherwise have that option available to them.

What was your take away from that poll?

You know, the shocker for me was that, you know, 35% of the respondents in the survey said they have no idea about school choice.

You know, we've been we've been having this debate at the state House now for several years.

And I anticipate that it's going to be an even more intense debate in 2023.

And you've got about a third of the respondents to this statewide survey saying this is a new concept to them.

It's not a new concept to those on the ground, in those in the mix.

But it gives you a sense of how much how much, you know, this is an unknown to many Idahoans.

And as we talk about this debate and as the terminology gets thrown around in this debate, a lot of the audience is coming into this, you know, with with no preconceptions and really no knowledge about the issue.

Now, I was at the event where they previewed the poll, and right after that, there was a panel of lawmakers, you know, all of whom are school choice advocates.

And that stuck that that stood out to them, too.

They were they were surprised.

And some of them said, you know, we need to do a better job of educating people what this is so we can have a better, more robust debate about it.

I also wonder, too, how much people's answers might change depending on how the question is phrased and what options are put in front of them.

Because as as you've written about this week, not all school choice options are the same.

Yeah, I really wanted to break down this week and it's a story published on Thursday.

What is and what isn't a voucher because that is the word that gets thrown around a lot in this debate, particularly by opponents.

I mean, vouchers has become kind of a loaded word in the school choice debate and for critics, vouchers is is kind of the catchall description of anything school choice related.

And for proponents who are saying, hey, we're not really talking about a voucher bill, why does the voucher word keep getting tossed around?

The truth is, somewhere in between.

A voucher program is very specific.

The state or the, you know, a municipality, whichever, whatever government unit cuts a check for parents.

Parents give that money to a private school.

It's a very specific program.

When you get into these education savings accounts or scholarship programs, which is what we've seen debated at the state House the past few sessions.

It's not quite as direct.

Parents have a lot more options about, you know, where they could spend education, savings accounts, dollars.

So the proponents of school choice, they do have a point when they say not everything is a strictly speaking voucher bill, but the opponents have a point, too, because when you get down to the nitty gritty of what an education savings account does or what a scholarship program does, it does basically something very vouchery.

It basically moves private dollars into it moves public dollars into potentially into private education, which is exactly what a voucher program is supposed to do.

So they do have a point.

These are somewhat voucheresque.

They're not as directly a voucher program.

We also know that this is a conversation.

This is a concept that is really gaining support nationwide, not just here in Idaho, but we've seen similar programs passed in other states, including Arizona.

I'm sure that a lot of those lawmakers who support school choice options are going to be looking at that $330 million that was passed during the special session as a potential way to fund some of these programs.

You know I said it before a few weeks ago and I'll say it again.

You know, the easy part was in September when lawmakers agreed to put $330 million into education.

Now, the tough now the tough job comes as lawmakers try to figure out exactly where the $330 million goes within education, how much of it goes into teacher salaries, how much of it goes into facilities, how much of it potentially goes into whatever you want to call a school choice piece of legislation?

All of that money is up in the air.

And oh, by the way, you've also got this $80 million program that was set up for in-demand careers.

We're still trying to figure out exactly what that's going to look like.

There's a whole lot of money to to sort out here in a session that begins in less than a month.

I'm sure we will have you back on to talk about all of those debates in January.

Kevin Richert , Idaho Education News, thank you so much for joining us.

Thanks.

Earlier this year, the Idaho Department of Labor put out a children's book discussing apprenticeship programs in the state.

Here to discuss that book is Director Jani Revier.

Director, thank you so much for joining us.

Why a children's book?

Well, thank you so much for having me.

And give me the opportunity to talk about Booper Dreams Big.

It's it's an almost true story of apprenticeship and the reason that the the department put out this book was we have a federal grant to try and expand apprenticeship opportunities in the state.

And part of that included trying to bring more people in and bring out the understanding about what an apprenticeship is and and what it can be.

And if we.

So it's great to talk to kids right as they’re leaving high school or headed into the workforce.

But we thought if you really want to get to kids, get to them in that K through 5 age when they're starting to think about what career they want to do, where they're where they want to go.

And we wanted to let folks know that an apprenticeship is an option.

It's a way to get the skills you need in order to do that job you want.

And so through this grant, we were able to write the book, Booper Dreams Big.

And then we're going to we have it in the English version as well as a bilingual version.

Yes, in Spanish bilingual version.

And we also have through the grant put together a lesson plan for teachers to use and incorporate in the classroom.

And all of this is made available free to the teachers.

You can go to our website to ApprenticeshipIdaho.gov or just contact the department and and all of that's made available so we can try and spread the word about the benefits of apprenticeships.

It's available for teachers, it's available for libraries.

Is a copy are copies available for regular citizens?

We're really trying to focus on making sure that we have the availability for the teachers and the and the libraries.

But the the book can be downloaded.

So if someone wants to download it and print out, they can certainly do that.

Fantastic.

And for people who aren’t familiar with apprenticeships, what sort of career paths do apprenticeships open up?

You know, traditionally people thought of apprenticeships as a way to get into the trades, construction or or HVAC electricity, all all of those types of things.

And and we've really made an effort and we still have those apprenticeships and they're extremely important, but we've made an effort to try and expand apprenticeships into the nontraditional areas.

And so we're seeing some of the biggest growth in apprenticeships has come in health care or in advanced manufacturing, even I.T.

There's a lot of opportunities for apprenticeship programs because really at the end of the day, it's just on the job training and combined with the with the necessary instruction to get the skills.

And so through the registered apprenticeship program, there's a lot of opportunities to advance into areas or headed areas where you wouldn't traditionally think of for apprenticeships.

Well, that is Booper Dreams Big.

It is available to download at the apprenticeship ApprenticeshipIdaho.gov Fantastic.

While I have you here, I wanted to ask about the Department of Labor's legislative priorities for this 2023 session.

So we have one bill that we're bringing forward this year.

Traditionally, when you apply for unemployment insurance, your you are only eligible based on on work reasons and not for personal reasons.

So if you have to quit your job for a personal reason, you wouldn't be eligible.

So we are changing.

We're proposing to change statute to allow for a personnel personal eligibility in two circumstances.

That being when you have to quit your job because your spouse is relocated in a military spouse is relocated, or in the second instance would be in cases where you have to quit your job because you're a victim of domestic violence.

So it's not huge populations.

We don't expect a very big impact on the trust fund, but it makes a very big impact in difference in those people's lives.

Earlier on Friday, the Department of Labor came out with its latest unemployment report showing a very slight uptick from October to November of 2.9 to 3%.

How is Idaho's unemployment landscape right now?

So, you know, earlier this year we were down as low as about 2.5% unemployment rate.

And that's really, really low.

And I think businesses felt that we had three job openings for every unemployed Idahoan, it was just a very tight labor market.

You had businesses that were going out of business because they couldn't find workers.

And we still have a very tight labor market.

We've got closer to two job openings for every unemployed Idahoan.

And so we had seen we still have a very tight labor market, but we have seen it loosened a little bit.

And so some businesses are having a little bit easier time finding those employees.

But we're not seeing a rush of layoffs.

We're not seeing a significant increase in people applying for benefits outside of that traditional seasonal increase that we see because of the weather.

Are there any regional differences in those unemployment numbers?

Yes, there's always regional differences on our website, Labor.Idaho.gov we have statistics by county by region.

So you can break it down and look at it in every every which way.

How well is the department set up and the state as a whole set up for, you know, if and when we face a possible recession?

You know, in my humble opinion, I think the state's in a very good position for a possible recession.

I think the governor and the legislature have done a really good job of making sure that we what we had the big influx of extra dollars, we spent them wisely, did a lot of one time things, didn't plan for ongoing spending at the Department of Labor.

I also think that we're positioned pretty well.

No one was prepared for the the pandemic and we were not adequately staffed for the pandemic.

But should we head into another recession?

We are adequately staffed for a potential uptick in unemployment insurance claims.

We have a little less than a minute left.

But, you know, three years after the start of the pandemic, states are seeing a big shift in what federal funds are available.

Is that impacting your budget request that you've submitted?

In other words, are you needing to look for state funds to shore up what federal funds used to pay for?

Yes.

During the pandemic, the Department of Labor received a lot of federal dollars and we almost all of our funding comes from the federal government.

And so we are not requesting general fund dollars in order to make up for that that decrease.

We fortunately have a dedicated fund that we're able to shift some of those funding to, and then we will adjust the programs that we offer to make sure that we fit within the budget.

All right, Jani Revier director of the Idaho Department of Labor, thanks for joining us.

Thank you.

And we're off for the next two weeks for the holidays, but we're back the first week of January, starting with live coverage of the inauguration at noon Mountain Time on January sixth.

In addition to our regular Friday show.

Thanks so much for watching and have a happy holiday season.

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.