Posted on 01/22/2023 6:03:44 AM PST by Twotone
On Monday, the education establishment pitched their vision for the public school system to the House and Senate Education Committees.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Debbie Critchfield, State Board of Education President Kurt Liebich, and Idaho Education Association President Layne McInelly took turns extolling the public school system, asking for ever more taxpayer money and, of course, rejecting any suggestion that money should follow students to wherever they get an education.
Corporate media, left-wing activists at Reclaim Idaho, and the state’s education establishment have seized upon the term “voucher” as a way to scare families away from supporting school choice. But vouchers are simply one method of providing school choice to families. While vouchers allow families to take taxpayer dollars to private schools, there is another option called an Education Savings Account (ESA) which gives parents complete flexibility in customizing their children’s educational needs. They are not the same thing.
Asked about ESAs in the morning session before the House committee, Critchfield attempted to confuse the issue, saying that she did not support vouchers. Senator Tammy Nichols did not let her off so easily in the afternoon, clarifying that ESAs were not vouchers and again asking the superintendent for her position.
Critchfield laid out her stance much more clearly than she ever did during last year’s campaign, saying, “I am not prepared to be an advocate for public funds going to private schools.”
The Idaho State Constitution requires the government to establish a public school system, but there is no stipulation that it must resemble the current system, which is run by an intractable bureaucracy and a far-left teacher’s union.
No matter how many so-called conservatives are in the State Legislature, the public school bureaucracy remains as leftist as California.
(Excerpt) Read more at idahofreedom.org ...
This is why, even in Idaho, we home school.
The public school, i.e., “government school” system is paid “a bounty”, for each child in ‘the school district’, who attends per semester.
Parsnts, in their wisdom to see what is really going on, put their children in private schools, or train them at home,, thereby “depriving/stealing away” monies mongered over by ‘the school board’.
BRAVO FOR THE PARENTS!!
Frankly, I don’t see why it matters what this woman thinks. The legislators can legislate vouchers & ESA’s & then the school system can deal with the result.
The other option is to contract with conservative organizations like Hillsdale to provide our schools the curriculum to use. Get rid of anything passed down by the Dept of Ed. Why is this so difficult?!
The teachers union floods the school choice system with problem children to spread the fun
Public funds go to private businesses all the time, for anything important like roads and bridges. Cut the bureaucrats in for a share of the kickbacks, and they will change their tune.
It “has been difficult” since the peanut-farmer-president’s installation of “The Department of Education”, thereby wrenching control of schools from state governments and federally centralizingstudents’ education.
Far be it for teachers to have to compete for business because they know students will migrate to better schools. The NEA tries to kill any form of alternative education because they know so many members are poor teachers.
“State Superintendent of Public Instruction Debbie Critchfield, State Board of Education President Kurt Liebich, and Idaho Education Association President Layne McInelly took turns extolling the public school system”
Direct the governor to fire them all or see state education funds frozen until that happens.
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