Idaho education budget hearing highlights special-education staffing, assessment contract and Career Ready grants

The Joint Finance Preparation Committee heard a budget presentation for the Idaho State Department of Education on issues including special-education staffing, a transition to a new statewide student assessment, the status of the Career Ready Students grant program and several one-time grants funded with federal and Millennium Fund dollars.

Jared Tetro, deputy division manager with the Legislative Services Office, opened the departmental briefing and led the committee through the agency budget book and slides, noting personnel counts, fund balances and a variety of ongoing and one-time enhancement requests.

The department sought ongoing positions to help manage a rising workload in special education, including a dispute resolution specialist, a charter-school special-education specialist and a second Indian education coordinator. State Superintendent Debbie Critchfield told the committee the department has seen “an increase in parents that are asking for their students to be tested” and that the department has experienced “a 65% increase in requests for mediation, 77% increase in just general complaints and a 1,200% increase in hearings.” She said the dispute-resolution coordinator’s role is “not to go in and say someone was right and someone was wrong, but it's to go in and say was the federal laws followed?”

Why it matters: Committee members pressed department staff on whether the requested positions reflect permanent increases in workload and on the financial…