Time for another lawsuit over Idaho’s terrible school building conditions | Opinion

In 2005, the Idaho Supreme Court ruled that the state’s “reliance on loans alone to pay for major repairs or the replacement of unsafe school buildings was inadequate for the poorer school districts.”

The court ruled that Idaho legislators had a responsibility to make sure school facilities were adequately funded but had failed to comply with the constitutional mandate to provide a “safe environment conducive to learning.”

And yet, here we are nearly 20 years later, and the school facilities situation in Idaho appears to be just as bad as it was when a group of superintendents, school districts and parents sued the state over inadequate funding.

As the Idaho Statesman’s Becca Savransky, in partnership with ProPublica, documented in a new story this week as part of a series on Idaho’s crumbling school infrastructure, the situation in Salmon is illustrative of the problem.

Voters there have shot down a bond six times to pay for a new K-8 school building to replace the elementary and middle schools, which had a series of problems and safety issues.

The bond failed each time, despite receiving a majority of votes in 2006. Idaho is one of just two states that requires a two-thirds supermajority for a bond to pass.

So the Salmon school district in 2012 turned to a state program that lets school districts borrow money from the state out of a $25 million fund if they have unsafe facilities and can’t pass a bond or figure out another way to fix them. The loan program was created after the Supreme Court’s ruling.

A state panel running the fund, though, wouldn’t approve enough funding for a new building.

So students today are learning in portable classrooms, and the old shuttered shell of a middle school still stands, a monument to the state’s dereliction in its duty to fund education.

Even worse, the fund that was created in response to losing the court case has been used only twice since 2006, and the last time was nearly 10 years ago. Public officials now admit that the fund was intended to be difficult to use.

Imagine that, a state that had a billion-dollar surplus and has cut about $2.7 billion in personal and corporate taxes in just three years can’t even help a rural school district pay for a new school building.

And the two-thirds supermajority requirement means it’s highly unlikely a bond, regardless of how necessary, will pass.

Problems persist today in Salmon’s existing school buildings, including sewage occasionally backing up into the nearly 70-year-old elementary school’s kitchen.

Do politicians care? Who cares about Salmon? Salmon is in Legislative District 31, a massive district that includes four counties and runs along the Montana state line from Salmon all the way to the Wyoming line.

Salmon’s three Republican legislators — Sen. Van Burtenshaw and Reps. Jerald Raymond and Rod Furniss — live two counties over in Terreton, Rigby and Menan, 120-160 miles from Salmon.

It’s small districts like Salmon’s that get hurt the most in Idaho’s system of relying on property taxpayers to shoulder the burden of paying for new buildings and repairs. These districts are often the least able to afford increases in property taxes for funding.

As Savransky reported, 43% of students in Salmon are from low-income families.

Bigger districts are better able to afford property tax increases, which creates an uneven and unfair system of public education in Idaho.

And that violates the Idaho Constitution, which states “it shall be the duty of the legislature of Idaho, to establish and maintain a general, uniform and thorough system of public, free common schools.”

It’s a violation that the courts have already ruled on, nearly 20 years ago.

Legislators could fix the problem by funding the state loan program and making it easier for districts to receive money.

Otherwise, maybe it’s time for someone to sue again and get this to the Idaho Supreme Court, to force more action.

Clearly the action taken last time was weak and did not actually fix the problem.

The parents in Salmon’s school district would have a winning case.

Statesman editorials are the unsigned opinion of the Idaho Statesman’s editorial board. Board members are opinion editor Scott McIntosh, opinion writer Bryan Clark, editor Chadd Cripe, newsroom editors Dana Oland and Jim Keyser and community members Mary Rohlfing and Patricia Nilsson.