Private school subsidies will produce a few winners and many losers

Guest Editorial by Jim Jones

Let’s be honest. The push to require Idaho taxpayers to subsidize private and religious schooling is not about “choice.” Experience in voucher states indicates that the great majority of those who get the subsidy money are already sending their kids to private or religious schools. That will undoubtedly be the case in Idaho. The only real question is who benefits from the money extracted from taxpayers and who gets stuck paying the bill–who wins and who loses. Just follow the money.

The money trail started early in the nation’s history in a struggle between those who wished for an egalitarian society on one side, and the ultra-rich, who felt entitled to chart our destiny with a trickle-down society, on the other side. America’s public school system was established for the egalitarian side to give every child a fair chance in life. However, there has always been strong pressure by those with extreme wealth to take the reins and skew the national playing field toward the trickle-down side.

In the last decade or so, the ultra-rich have targeted the public schools, apparently seeing them as a threat to their control of society. The billionaire class and its right-wing allies, including the Koch network, the Heritage Foundation and the State Policy Network (SPN), are doing their utmost to privatize K-12 education in America. Those groups are represented in Idaho. The Idaho Freedom Foundation (IFF) and the Mountain States Policy Center (MSPC) are both part of the SPN. IFF wants the state to get out of the public school business. MSPC is a member of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which advocates a universal voucher system.

Some of these dark-money-funded groups may have a profit motive, while others may see it as a way of indoctrinating kids in their world view. Whatever their motivation, the fact is that out-of-state billionaires have been pouring campaign money into Idaho in the last several years to elect legislators who will do their bidding on school voucher legislation. Their campaign money has been effective in knocking off many voucher opponents, particularly in the closed GOP primary. They now have an army of lobbyists roaming the legislative halls to grab as many tax dollars as possible to privatize education–$50 million in Rep. Horman's bill and $250 million in Rep. Hostetler’s bill. Of course, those figures would skyrocket in future years.

Many well-meaning Idaho parents have joined the out-of-state lobbyists to push for voucher legislation. One person who lobbied last year had four children enrolled in Nampa Christian School. He said, “I’m already paying taxes that the public school benefits from that I don’t receive any benefit from.” If he gets a tax credit or voucher payment of either $20,000 (Horman’s bill) or $38,000 (Hostetler’s bill) for those kids, he might not have to pay any state taxes for any government program. Many people pay state taxes for programs from which they do not personally benefit.

Any number of churches that operate religious schools have been lobbying for subsidy money, even though it would cause legislators to break the Idaho Constitution’s strict commandment against using public funds for religious education. About 90% of subsidy payments would be used for religious education. I certainly don’t begrudge Nampa Christian, Cole Valley Christian, Catholic schools, Lutheran schools or any other schools from seeking government subsidies. But, it seems the proper way to do it would be to first amend the Constitution to remove the prohibition against religious school funding. As it is, religious school parents are being used as an inadvertent battering ram against the public school system–to support the billionaires’ effort to weaken that system, while also injecting religious doctrine into taxpayer-financed education in Idaho.

Idaho churches that do not operate schools will receive absolutely no benefit from subsidy programs. Take, for instance, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which has a strong and historic presence in the State of Idaho. Church members have been stalwart supporters of public education, but the church does not operate a system of religious schools. They handle religious teaching the right way– without use of public money in their seminaries. Many communities of the church’s faithful are located in rural areas around the state, particularly in the southern part of the state. These factors indicate that Mormon public-school patrons will suffer disadvantages in a subsidized system–no public education funding for church members and a reduction of state funding for the rural public schools that their kids attend.

The best way to prevent the families of Idaho’s 313,160 public school students from losing, while subsidizing about 36,000 kids schooled privately, is to vote down any subsidy program. The solemn commandment prohibiting publicly-subsidized religious schooling has worked well since statehood and will serve us well into the future.

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About the Author

Jim Jones is a Vietnam combat veteran who served 8 years as Idaho Attorney General (1983-1991) and 12 years as a Justice on the Idaho Supreme Court (2005-2017). His columns are collected at JJCommonTater.com.