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State board official outlines scholarship program budgets and new rural educator incentive request
Summary
The Office of the State Board of Education reported on scholarships and grants spending, described timing variability that affects expenditures, and requested funding for a rural and underserved educator incentive plus a software engineer position to maintain scholarship systems.
BOISE — The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee reviewed the Scholarships and Grants budget Friday and heard the State Board of Education describe a request to expand funding for rural and underserved educator incentives and to add technical staff.
Kevin Campbell, budget and policy analyst with the Legislative Services Office, said the Scholarships and Grants program administers multiple statewide awards including the Opportunity Scholarship, the Armed Forces and Public Safety Officer Scholarship, GEAR UP, Idaho Work Study and the Rural and Underserved Educator Incentive Program. He told the committee the program’s spending is heavily timing-dependent; award cycles and federal grant timing do not always align with the state fiscal year, so appropriations-to-expenditures comparisons can vary year to year.
Campbell said 99.5% of spending in the program goes to trustee and benefit payments (scholarship awards) and about 0.5% to personnel. The program requested $1,375,000 in FY2026 for the rural and underserved educator incentive program and $124,000 for a software engineer position to maintain public-facing scholarship databases.
Josh Whitworth, executive director of the State Board of Education, said some scholarship-support functions are borne by staff in other parts of the board and that the software-engineer request responds to a backlog of database and user-interface work. He told the committee the agency will provide more detailed performance metrics for the rural incentive program, including district-level allocations and retention information.
Chair members asked for data showing which districts received incentive awards and whether the program is achieving recruitment and retention goals. Whitworth said early cohorts included roughly 390 teachers in the first cohort and about 231 in the second and agreed to provide more granular outcome data.
Ending — Committee members asked the State Board to return written performance metrics for the rural and underserved educator incentive program, including district and retention data, and to clarify the software-engineer request and vacancy funding availability.
