Senate committee advances bill to revive and expand school facilities fund for rural districts

The Idaho Senate Education Committee voted to send House Bill 338 to the Senate floor with a due-pass recommendation after extended committee discussion and public testimony from rural communities.

Representative Doug Pickett, House Education Committee chair (Cassia, Oneida and Minidoka counties), described the bill as an effort to revive a largely unused Public School Facilities Cooperative Fund created after litigation in the mid-2000s. "That bill created what was known as the Public School Facilities Cooperative Fund, and it was funded to the tune of 25,000,000," Pickett said. He said the original fund saw little use partly because a condition of accessing funds required the state to appoint a district supervisor, which districts avoided.

Under the bill discussed in committee, lawmakers would make $25,000,000 available from an existing pot of funds and add $25,000,000 from the bond-levy equalization fund, creating a pool the sponsor described in testimony as roughly $50.5 million…