Gets the Feds Out of Idaho Education

This is seriously low hanging fruit for conservative legislators

Last January I contrasted the responses of Superintendent of Public Instruction Debbie Critchfield and Attorney General Raúl Labrador to a flood of outraged parents who were concerned about public schools adopting policies regarding so-called transgender students. Critchfield sent a letter to legislators calling for grace for school boards that adopted such policies because of federal pressure. Labrador, on the other hand, suggested that such policies likely violated state law and promised to investigate, no matter what the feds might threaten.

Go read through the United States Constitution and let me know where it says that the federal government has the last word on public schooling. I’ll wait.

Did you find anything? Of course not. Our founders assumed that education would be the responsibility of families, churches, or at most communities.

So why does the federal government exert so much influence on Idaho’s public school systems? Why do we even have a federal Department of Education? The answer, as usual, is money. The federal government learned long ago that they could bypass the Constitution by giving states their own citizens’ tax dollars in exchange for following their rules.

The federal government currently subsidizes public education in Idaho to the tune of $525.2 million. While that’s a lot of money to you and me, it’s a rounding error to the federal government and around 3.6% of Idaho’s budget. According to a recent analysis by Idaho Education News, nearly half of that total is one-time Covid relief funds, leaving $268.5 million of ongoing federal dollars. That is less than 2% of Idaho’s total budget.

Remember that in September 2022, Governor Brad Little called a special session to pass a bill that among other things appropriated more than $400 million of that year’s surplus for educational purposes. That could have completely replaced federal spending in Idaho’s public school system, discarding the onerous strings that come with that money.

Kevin Richert, the author of the Idaho Education News article linked above, does not hide his bias, calling the amount of federal money “staggering”, suggesting that the state is not giving enough money to education already, and implying that Rep. Wendy Horman is incorrect in saying that the federal government uses money to push policies and curricula.

Richert writes that Horman “…is concerned that the feds use their money to influence curriculum (even though those decisions are made strictly at the local level) and secure restroom accommodations for transgender students (even though the 2023 Legislature passed a law addressing this topic).”

Public education boosters play a rhetorical shell game where they pretend the federal government does not indeed exert any pressure regarding policies or curricula because those decisions are technically made at the local level. However, recall the letter that Critchfield sent last January, explaining how the federal government uses lawsuits and threats of lawsuits to go even further than their bureaucratic regulations. “Sure, there’s no rule that says you have to let boys wearing dresses use the girls’ bathroom, but I’m sure your voters wouldn’t like their property taxes paying for lawyers to defend you from the inevitable lawsuits.”

State Supt. Debbie Critchfield speaks to members of the Senate Education Committee during the 2023 session. Source: Idaho Capitol Sun

Removing federal money from Idaho public education is the first step in reclaiming state sovereignty over such an important area of society. Governor Little likes to boast about how much investment he has made in public schools, so why not invest in independence from federal tyranny? $300 million a year is a bargain price to restore local control over education.

A great majority of students attend government schools in Idaho, so we can’t just write them off. Reform starts with local control. Contact your legislators and ask them to consider ways to replace federal money in public education. Let’s start some conversations, get some bills printed, and see what we can do. Education is too important to outsource to Washington DC.