Over three years, Idaho’s public schools have lost nearly a quarter of a billion dollars in funding, and we rank 50th in the United States in per-pupil investment. State Superintendent Tom Luna’s radical plan to overhaul education has piled insult on top of injury.

Senate Bills 1108, 1110 and 1184 are now law, despite the strong objections of a majority of Idahoans who heard nothing about the Luna plan during last year’s election campaign. Superintendent Luna recently toured the state to try and explain the laws to skeptical Idaho educators, claiming that people only opposed his ideas because we misunderstood them.

To the contrary, Idahoans understand the laws all too well, and we do not intend to let these harmful laws do lasting damage. Idaho parents and teachers are currently collecting signatures to refer the laws to a vote of the people in November 2012.

Nineteen months is a long time to let bad laws stay on the books, especially when our children’s education is at stake. But because referenda can only be placed on the ballot for a biennial general election, the record of havoc wreaked by Senate Bills 1108, 1110 and 1184 will continue to grow.

Senate Bill 1108 prohibits school districts from providing proven teachers with protections against arbitrary discipline and firing. It forbids negotiations regarding class size and other keys to the best possible student learning conditions.

This law allows school districts to unilaterally reduce school employee pay and benefits; it forbids districts from considering seniority in lay-off decisions; and it removes the funding safety net for school districts. Teachers, administrators and support personnel could be laid off well into the school year.

Senate Bill 1110 mandates a statewide pay-for-performance plan without funding it. Somehow, school districts will be forced to come up with $38 million for Fiscal Year 2013 and $51 million each year after that for an unproven pay scheme, all at a time when they are scrambling to fund educators’ base pay and preserve teachers for core classes.

Of course, Senate Bill 1184 – the infamous teachers-for-laptops law – suggests that teachers aren’t really all that important. By mandating online classes and “mobile computing devices” to “educate more students at a higher level with limited resources” (in Superintendent Luna’s favorite phrase), Senate Bill 1184 will force districts to increase class sizes, lay off educators, cut teacher pay or possibly all of the above. The bill ordered a task force to study these technology mandates, but at the April 21 State Board of Education meeting, Superintendent Luna appeared determined to have the state board do his bidding this spring, without any public input.

The Luna plan was sold to skeptical lawmakers as a way of giving districts more local control, yet the new laws simply passed the buck (without the bucks) to local school boards and administrators who must now make difficult decisions on who, what, where and how deeply to cut. Luna, Gov. Butch Otter and the Legislative majority will insist that they did not raise our taxes. Who believes them? Dozens of districts statewide will run levies this year to ask citizens for the dollars the state refuses to provide.

The Luna laws are bad for children and teachers. But our state Constitution gives us a way to get rid of them. Visit rejectthelunalaws.com and be sure and sign all three petitions by June 1 to give Idahoans the opportunity to repeal these damaging laws in 2012.

Sherri Wood

President

Idaho Education Association