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Senate Education Committee votes to print RS 31,992, a proposed school-choice measure
Summary
The Idaho Senate Education Committee voted to print RS 31,992 — a proposed expansion of school-choice funding that its sponsor described as adding $50 million in new dollars and building on an existing Empowering Parents program — after a brief debate over whether the measure amounts to a voucher program.
The Idaho Senate Education Committee voted to send RS 31,992 to be printed after a brief floor-level debate on whether the measure represents a voucher proposal.
Senator Dave Lent, the bill sponsor, told the committee the legislation is designed to expand school-choice options while attaching accountability requirements. "Accountable. Schools are required to meet accountable standards outlined in the legislation. The word I'm using here is a threshold," Lent said during his introduction. He described three design goals — "fair, accountable, responsible, and transparent" — and said the measure would add $50,000,000 in new funding while leveraging $30,000,000 already in the Empowering Parents program for an $80,000,000 total pool.
The measure drew questions and objections from several senators before the committee voted. Senator Ward Engelking said, "this, at this point, looks like a voucher bill to me, and that's just a line in the sand for me, so I'll be voting no." Senator Summerer said she would vote to print the bill to allow the Legislature to define terms and debate the details: "we were told by the governor ... he would support a bill that was fair, accountable, responsible, and transparent. But yet we don't have definitions on what those are ... I will be supporting this bill."
Committee procedure and outcome The committee's action at this hearing was procedural: senators voted to print RS 31,992 so the bill text can be drafted and made available to the public and other lawmakers for detailed review. Senator Woodward moved to print the routing slip; Senator Burton Shaw seconded the motion. The motion passed on a voice vote; no roll-call tally was recorded in the hearing transcript.
What the sponsor said the bill would do Senator Lent described several policy elements the draft bill seeks to incorporate: a threshold of accountability for schools (including private and religious schools) that receive public dollars; a hard cap of $50 million in new dollars on the proposal; building on the existing Empowering Parents program to track spending; expanded eligibility targeting households with adjusted gross income of $80,000 or less while allowing some limited availability beyond that threshold; reductions in state-required reporting that are not federally tied; and clarifications to open-enrollment rules aimed at easing district capacity issues for special education.
What printing does — and does not — mean Committee members repeatedly emphasized that the vote was only to print the bill for public review and subsequent committee work, not to adopt the policy as final. Senator Summerer framed the vote as a necessary step to enable debate over definitions and details that the sponsor had not yet finalized. No final policy decisions or programmatic implementations were made at the hearing.
Next steps Because the committee voted to print RS 31,992, the bill will be drafted in bill form and returned to the committee for a subsequent public hearing and debate before any committee-level adoption or floor action.
