Committee advances overhaul to school funding formula; sponsors propose weighted per‑student distribution and two‑year hold harmless

The Senate Education Committee voted to advance Senate Bill 10‑96, a policy bill that would change how a portion of Idaho’s K–12 funding is distributed by using a weighted per‑student mechanism for the discretionary portion of the public schools budget.

Sponsor Senator Woodward told the committee the proposal focuses on distributing discretionary funds by student attributes—economically disadvantaged status, English‑language learner status, special education, small‑school factors, gifted and talented and at‑risk students in alternative settings. “What we're gonna add this amount to ... is the base amount with an additional factor to determine the distribution of these funds,” he said, explaining that weights stack when a student has multiple qualifying attributes.

Why it matters: The sponsor described the bill as an incremental step toward a broader funding‑model rewrite. Rather than immediately changing the entire salary‑based apportionment, the bill targets the discretionary portion of the budget (the sponsor highlighted roughly $379 million of discretionary…