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Committee holds bill on alternative certification and apprenticeship for rural administrators amid mentoring concerns
Summary
House Bill 295, a proposal to create an apprenticeship/alternate-certification route for school administrators aimed at rural districts, was held in the Senate Education Committee after debate over mentoring, instructional experience, and coordination with State Department work.
House Bill 295, proposed to create an apprenticeship or alternate route to administrative certification intended to help rural Idaho districts recruit and retain principals and superintendents, was held in committee after debate on mentoring and coordination with ongoing state work.
Representative Dale Hawkins told the committee the bill is intended to give rural communities a path to sponsor local candidates who meet educational requirements and can be mentored into administrative roles. He said rural districts face difficulty filling leadership positions and that the proposal is designed to “raise somebody up who has already adjusted to the culture in the area.”
Heather Williams, speaking for the Idaho Association of School Administrators and the Idaho Association of School Superintendents, said the sponsors had met with the associations and that the organizations were willing to work on an amendment but opposed the bill in its present form because it lacks a required mentoring mechanism. Williams told the committee the current bill mirrors charter-administrator language but does not include the private and nonprofit support structures (fellowships, mentoring) that make that route successful.
Committee members also raised policy questions: Senator Ward Engelking pointed to the lack of required instructional experience in the draft and expressed concern that significant changes were being sent to the fourteenth order without a follow-up full committee hearing or public input. Senator Woodward said a prior alternate-route effort in her district had been “quite destructive” and urged caution.
The committee considered a substitute motion to send the bill to the fourteenth order for amendment; that substitute motion failed on a recorded vote. The committee then voted 6–3 to hold House Bill 295 in committee until the state-board level work on administrator pipelines concludes.
Sponsors said they are willing to work with the Idaho Superintendents Association and other stakeholders to add mentoring and other protections, and supporters from several rural districts testified in favor of creating a local pathway for administrators.
