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State Board of Education briefs JFAC on scholarships and rural educator incentive program
Summary
The State Board of Education's Scholarships and Grants program reported steady trustee payments, growing scholarship lines such as the Opportunity Scholarship and the rural/underserved educator incentive, and requested staffing to maintain application systems.
Kevin Campbell, budget and policy analyst with the Legislative Services Office, presented the Scholarships and Grants budget, which is administratively housed in the Office of the State Board of Education (OSBE).
Campbell said 99.5% of the program’s spending is trustee and benefit payments; personnel costs account for roughly 0.5% of spending. The budget funds several programs: the Opportunity Scholarship, the Armed Forces and Public Safety Officer Scholarship, GEAR UP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness Undergraduate Program) subgrants, the Idaho Work Study Program, and the rural/bridal and underserved educator incentive program.
Josh Whitworth, executive director of the State Board of Education, told the committee much of the operational work for scholarship servicing is supported by other staff in the board’s office and by contractors that maintain public-facing application systems. OSBE requested $1,375,000 for the rural/bridal and underserved educator incentive program for FY2026 and an enhancement to fund a software engineer position to maintain public databases and application interfaces; Campbell said there’s a backlog of maintenance and security work on those systems.
Whitworth said he is planning to provide additional performance data and analysis. On the rural/underserved educator incentive program he offered initial cohort figures: roughly 390 teachers in the first cohort and about 231 in the second, and committed to return with district-level and retention data segregated by the program’s definitions of “rural” and “underserved.”
Lawmakers asked about measurable outcomes and whether the scholarships are meeting recruitment and retention goals. Whitworth said the board will study outcomes and provide further reporting on completion and placement of scholarship recipients.
The committee did not record any formal votes on OSBE’s requests during this hearing; analysts and the director were asked to provide additional performance measures to support future budget decisions.
