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New House education chair emphasizes rural schools, teacher pay gains and CTE capacity
Summary
House Education Chairman Doug Pickett told JFAC that Idaho has doubled K‑12 funding over the last decade, cited teacher pay increases and urged continued support for rural schools and postsecondary career and technical education capacity.
House Education Chairman Doug Pickett outlined K‑12 and postsecondary priorities to the Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee on March 7, urging sustained support for rural public schools and expanded capacity for career and technical education.
"Over the past 10 years, the public education K‑12 budget has doubled from 1,400,000,000.0 to 2,800,000,000.0," Pickett told the committee, and he said Idaho's average K‑12 teacher pay has increased to "nearly $63,000 this school year," a 42% increase over a decade. He thanked JFAC for an additional $83,000,000 to increase teacher salaries that year and for a policy allowing districts to enroll teachers in the state health insurance plan, which he said represents an approximate $4,000 benefit to teachers.
Pickett urged balanced attention to both classical academic foundations and practical trade-based pathways. He said community-college CTE programs are significantly oversubscribed and face capacity limits and that recruiting qualified CTE instructors is increasingly difficult because the private sector competes for skilled labor.
He emphasized Idaho's rural school structure, noting Idaho code's rural definition and asserting that many rural districts form the backbone of their communities. Pickett and members referenced several funding gap estimates he cited: an estimated $3 billion statewide facilities funding gap, an $83 million gap for special needs, about $5 million to retool teachers in phonetics for early literacy and $35 million for outcome-based funding in K‑12.
"We need to gear our funding towards meeting the increasing demand for HVAC, plumbing, electrical, and light industry," Pickett said, while cautioning against sacrificing basics in a rush to expand career programs. He also said his committee prefers that potential new federal education funds be passed through to their intended K‑12 purposes rather than repurposed at the federal level.
Pickett's remarks framed several of the day’s budget conversations, including community-college capacity and the committee's later actions on community-college funding.
