Chapter 13: Idaho: Staff Writer¹

Idaho’s constitution was approved in 1890. Article IX, Section I contained the new state’s education clause, placing a duty on the state legislature for the oversight of public education. Article IX has remained unchanged since adoption. The education provision requires the legislature to establish a system of free schools, saying:

Idaho has 115 public school districts, ten district-sponsored charter schools, 40 LEA charter schools, and educates nearly 300,000 schoolchildren across school organizations that include a range from one-teacher schools to more urban settings.

Like many states, Idaho has experienced variable fortunes related to economic and other conditions. Since Fiscal Year 2000 the state engaged reductions in the share of total state spending going to public schools, with reduction blamed on tax cuts and health and human services primarily in the form of Medicaid.³ While dollars were said to track closely according to that pattern, it was additionally said that changes to tax structure also contributed, as beginning in 2000 Idaho’s legislature began reducing taxes. Tax changes included a reduction in the corporate income tax rate, indexing individual income tax brackets for inflation, increasing the income tax grocery credit, and exchanging a sales tax rate increase for an elimination of the public school maintenance and operations property tax levy, resulting in tens of millions of dollars in lost net revenue. Each of these changes reduced the state’s capacity to fund public services and contributed to the slowing of state spending after FY 2000. Among other changes, these events had the effect of elimination of equalized levies for M&O funding and increased activity surrounding voter approval of supplemental tax override levies.⁴