Just this March, Idaho Governor Brad Little signed into law House Bill 93, an act that would grant state level tax credits of 5,000 dollars for private education vouchers and 7,500 for children with disabilities.
The bill redirected 50 million dollars from public school funding toward the Parental Choice Tax Credit, which earned the ire of some public school educators and Democratic legislators, with Senator Janie Ward-Engelking (D-Boise) reportedly saying according to the IEA “We can’t afford to take on private religious schools at this point… When we see what’s happened in other states… there’s also been a lot of fraud and exploitation.”
Regardless, the bill was signed into law, but it is now facing a legal challenge supported by Reclaim Idaho, an organization that is a self-described “grassroots movement designed to protect and improve the quality of life for working Idahoans.” Currently, Reclaim Idaho is cooperating with “Save Our Schools” to collect signatures for a petition to oppose the bill.
The organization is supporting a group of public school educators suing the Idaho state government for violating the obligation to “establish and maintain a general, uniform and thorough system of public free common schools,” as found in the Idaho Constitution. Representative Wendy Horman (R-Idaho Falls), a co-sponsor of the bill, said to Idaho EdNews that she is “as confident as we ever have been in the constitutionality of this bill, both with the Idaho Constitution and the United States Constitution.”
Other Republican state legislators like Senator Jim Woodward (R-Sagle) and Representative Mark Sauter (R-Sandpoint) who voted against the bill’s passage in March have remained vocal critics of the program, and have been supporting Reclaim Idaho’s initiative, with Sauter reportedly saying, according to the Sandpoint Reader, that “I think there’s got to be better ways for us to support public education and school choice. … but we have to vote ‘no’ sometimes, and this was one that it wasn’t that hard for me to push the button.”
