Save Our Schools

Another political nonprofit enters the scene

Some billboards recently appeared in the Treasure Valley praising legislators who voted against school choice. This one extolling Rep. Kenny Wroten of Nampa was paid for by a political nonprofit called “Save Our Schools Idaho Inc.”

As a nonprofit, Save Our Schools does not have to report donors or expenditures, so long as they do not engage in overt electioneering. That means that they can praise or condemn political figures without explicitly urging you to vote for or against them. This is the other side of the coin I mentioned last week, where another 501c4 nonprofit named the Conservative Accountability Project is attacking conservative senators such as Cindy Carlson and Dan Foreman.

The purpose of the 501c4 is to create positive or negative associations with certain politicians, to prime voters with these opinions in the months leading up to the election. Both sides do this, so I’m not going to condemn anyone for this strategy, however I think it’s always good to know who is behind which group.

According to the Secretary of State’s website, Save Our Schools Idaho Inc. was formed in January 2023, just as the legislative session was getting underway. It was incorporated by Nat Smith, with Wil Overgaard, Ken Hart, and Geoff Thomas signing on as directors. I have not yet found much information on these four men, save that two of them likely live in the Treasure Valley, and the other two in North Idaho.

The address listed for all four men is a nondescript office building on the shores of the Spokane River in Post Falls, and appears to belong to Northwest Registered Agent LLC, which served as the agent for the creation of the nonprofit. The post office box of the nonprofit is #2353 in Boise.

Around the same time they created a website, Facebook page, and Twitter account. Their website content is full of content against education savings accounts (ESAs), presumably because they knew that conservative senators were preparing to unveil Senate Bill 1038 which would have created ESAs for families to use at the schools of their choice. Save Our Schools deliberately conflated ESAs with vouchers, perhaps because they have found the latter word to sound scarier to voters. Senate Democrats did the same thing during debate over S1038.

After S1038 was defeated on the Senate floor, Sen. Lori Den Hartog introduced S1161, a very mild school choice bill that expanded the Empowering Parents Program. This was considered to be a compromise bill to create more options for parents without going full ESA. It passed the Senate but was put in the drawer by Rep. Julie Yamamoto in the House Education Committee.

Even this was not enough for Save Our Schools, who posted a warning on Facebook the day S1161 passed the Senate:

This remains the most recent post on their social media pages. The new billboards represent a return to the arena for Save Our Schools. It’s clear that they oppose any possible reform to the public school system and will promote lawmakers who protect that system at all costs.

It’s interesting that they would pay for a billboard promoting Rep. Wroten, who did not have a chance to vote on school choice bills, nor sits on the House Education Committee. He is, however, facing two different challengers in next May’s primary. Both Amy Henry and Steve Tanner would likely be much more enthusiastic about school choice and reforming public education than Wroten, so they surely want to protect him.

The most engagement that Save Our Schools got on Facebook this year was when Reclaim Idaho shared their post thanking the 23 senators who voted against S1038. It’s always interesting to see who is making common cause out there, isn’t it? Their Twitter account is even more obvious, following nearly every Democrat in the Legislature along with a smattering of moderate Republicans such as Sen. Chuck Winder and Rep. Julie Yamamoto. The first person to follow Save Our Schools was Idaho 97 cofounder Emily Walton, which makes one wonder if she was involved with the nonprofit.

The battle over education has only just begun. Idaho’s Constitution mandates that the Legislature provide a free and common public school system, but that leaves a lot of room for interpretation.

When public school defenders say they want to “save our schools” are they really trying to say that the public education system delivers the absolute best experience for all students, or are they really worried about the jobs it provides for teachers, administrators, and staff? A few weeks ago I came across a tweet from a public school administrator in Tennessee warning about the effect of a proposed school choice program:

Notice that his first concern is the jobs that would potentially be lost if families chose to enroll their students in alternative institutions.

The claim that expanding school choice would destroy public schools is a pretty big self own, if you think about it. If the only thing keeping your institution alive is a government mandate, then does it really deserve to survive? Former Rep. Ron Nate wrote a great piece earlier this year imagining what it would look like if grocery stores operated according to the public school model.

Their other big claim, that expanding school choice would mean transferring public money to private institutions, is pretty silly if you think about it. Public schools spend money on private companies all the time, from the contractors hired to build the schools to the vendors who sell computers, software, and other educational equipment. How accountable are these expenditures? How often do lucrative contracts go to friends or relatives of school administrators? I bet it’s more common than we like to think.

I have yet to see a perfect education solution, but it is clear to me that our public school system needs significant reform. The biggest advantage to expanding school choice would be to create much needed competition that would inevitably lead to improvements. Organizations such as Save Our Schools Idaho Inc. stand in the way of reform on behalf of people with vested interests in the current system.

It’s time for an open and honest debate. We must objectively examine what public schools do well, what they do poorly, and what might be better handled by the private sector. Let’s tackle the low hanging fruit of federal dollars in our public school system and then work on the reform they so desperately need.