The Story of the Idaho Education Association Since 1892

Voices of courage, champions of excellence

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The Story of the Idaho Education Association Since 1892


The Idaho Education Association was founded on March 3, 1892, and quickly established itself as the leading advocacy organization for public education in Idaho. During its 120 years of championing universal, tuition-free, quality public education for Idaho’s children, the Association has made great strides. It has lobbied for high student and teacher standards, embraced innovation in the classroom, won fair workplace rights for educators, and been the foremost voice for adequate and equitable state

funding. Voices of Courage, Champions of Excellence tells the story of the brave educators who, on behalf of their students and their profession, confronted powerful policymakers, partnered with parents and other education supporters, and spoke loudly at the capitol and in the voting booth so Idaho’s children could have the best chance possible to become productive, educated citizens with a stake in our state’s and our country’s success.

The Idaho Education Association’s:

– MIssIon sTATEMEnT (adopted in 1995) The Idaho Education Association advocates the professional and personal well-being of its members and the vision of excellence in public education, the foundation of the future.

– Focus sTATEMEnT (2000) To help local associations build capacity to achieve excellence in public education.

– corE VAluEs (2004) Public Education: Preserving the foundation of our democracy.

Justice: upholding fair and equitable treatment for all. Unity: standing together for our common cause. Integrity: stating what we believe and living up to it.

$10.00

Jennifer A. Stevens

First school in Mountain Home.

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Jennifer A. Stevens

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ISBN 10: 1-59152-102-5ISBN 13: 978-1-59152-102-0

©2012 by Idaho Education Association Text © 2012 by Jennifer Stevens Cover and interior design by: Don Gura Graphic Design, Inc.Copy editing: Neysa CM Jensen.

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part by any means (with the exception of short quotes for the purpose of review) without the permission of the publisher.

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Contents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Bibliographic Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Chapter 1: 1892-1926 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Beginnings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Getting Settled: The First 25 Years . . . . . . 9

Teachers as Role Models and the Students’ Moral Compass . . . . . . . . . 10

The Profession . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

The IEA’s Organizational Evolution . . . . . . 14

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

Schools Then and Now: Lowell Elementary, Boise . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

IEA and the NEA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

Chapter 2: 1926-1940 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

Fighting For Idaho’s Children During Tough Times. . . . . . . . . 24

The Depression and the Impact on Educational Funding. . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Idaho’s Endowment Fund . . . . . . . . . . . 27

State Funding for Education and Equalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Rural Schools: Consolidation and Teacher Training . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35

Chapter 3: 1940-1963 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Keep the Teachers Here! . . . . . . . . . . . 36

Circling ‘round: Educational Funding and the Sales Tax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Technology and Schools . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46

IEA Headquarters. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

Chapter 4: 1963-1980 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

Money, Politics, and Education in Idaho . . .51

Giving Teachers Security and a Voice: Retirement and Professional Negotiations. . .57

Change in the Local Associations and the Structure of the IEA . . . . . . . . . . . .60

UniServ: Empowering, Organizing, and Representing Members . . . . . . . . . . . .62

The First 1% Initiative . . . . . . . . . . . .63

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .64

Idaho Teachers’ Strikes . . . . . . . . . . . . . .65

Chapter 5: 1980-2012 . . . . . . . . . . . . . .66

Creating a Fair Workplace . . . . . . . . . .66

Politics and Competition in Education . . . .70

Voluntary Contributions Act . . . . . . . . .74

IEA and Community Work . . . . . . . . . .75

The IEA Children’s Fund . . . . . . . . . . .76

Education Support Professionals . . . . . . .77

Idaho Education in the 21st Century . . . . .77

A Penny for Schools. . . . . . . . . . . . . .82

Three Years of Cuts to Education, 2009-2011 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .84

Historic Alteration of School Laws Headed for Referendum. . . . . . . . . . . .85

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .86

Teacher Compensation: iSTArS vs. weTEACH . .87

Barbara Morgan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .88

The Continued Professional Improvement of Idaho Teachers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .90

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .92

Appendix A: Listing of all IEA Presidents . . . .94

Appendix B: Listing of all IEA Executive Directors. . . . . . . . . . . . . .96

About the Author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .97

Historic Photos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .98

Contents

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AcknowlEdgEmEnTS

The Idaho Education Association created a History Project Task Force made up of longtime IEA members and staff from across the state. The Task Force was created to capture, record, and publish the 120-year history of the Idaho Education Association. Without them, this book would not be in your hands. Members include: Dale Baerlocher, Marcia Banta, Charlotte Cooke, Sue Finlay-Clark, Terry Gilbert, Judy Harold, Sue Hovey, Danial McCarty, Rob Nicholson, Peggy Park, Kathy Phelan, Dan Sakota, Willie Sullivan, and Kathy Yamamoto.

A smaller group within the Task Force took on the detailed management of the project, and the book could not have been completed without their passion, good humor, research, and other hard work. This group was composed of Sherri Wood, Jim Shackelford, Lyn Haun, Gayle Moore, and Bob Otten. All are former teachers, and their passion for the Idaho Education Association and the children it serves is evident in everything they do. They entrusted me with the management of the project and more importantly, with the telling of their story, an awesome task to which I hope I’ve done justice. The Association President, Penni Cyr, its Executive Director, Robin Nettinga, and the IEA Board of Directors all have been instrumental to the project as well, lending us their enthusiasm and their funding support. Without them, the project could not have reached completion.

Special thanks also go to the many staff and volunteers of the Idaho Education Association who have contributed to the organization over the past 120 years, making it the advocacy group it is today.

I also want to thank Kelly Horn, who attended public schools in southeast Idaho and is a newly-minted M.A. in History from Boise State University. She provided invaluable assistance on this book and wrote some of the interesting side stories you will read throughout.

Finally, the book is dedicated to all of Idaho’s teachers who arrive at school each day with a mission to mold tomorrow’s citizens into people who are engaged, impassioned, and equipped with the skills they need to make our country a better place. Their dedication to our children is a debt that is impossible to repay.

— Jennifer Stevens

BIBlIogrAphIc noTE

The story on the following pages was written by examining the records of the Idaho Education Association. It is intended to be a history of the group’s advocacy work and passion for educating Idaho’s children. Any reader who wishes to find out more about the sources used can contact the author, Jennifer Stevens, at [email protected].

All photographs of schools, teachers, and students were taken in Idaho.

mailto:[email protected]

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Those who make history rarely understand the significance of their actions at the

time. Such was surely the circumstance when Idaho’s educational leaders founded

the Idaho State Teachers’ Association on march 3, 1892. g From its founding, the

ISTA, or Idaho Education Association as it is known today, grappled with the many

complicated issues facing the education of Idaho’s youth. g The IEA is Idaho’s

professional organization for educators and, as such, has led the state through its

long educational evolution from an inefficient system of myriad rural schoolhouses

staffed by poorly trained, inadequately equipped, and dismally paid teachers to

a system organized by districts in which resources are shared across schools and

children and families can count on well-trained and highly qualified teachers. g over the years, the IEA has provided the platform for educational debate and led

the charge for an improved educational investment. g Although their courageous

activism often resulted in criticism from the general public, IEA members championed

excellence in public education and brought Idaho out of the dark days of the 1970s

when it was first discovered that the state ranked 50th of all states in educational

investment. g Although Idaho’s ranking remains close to the bottom, the IEA has

taken many steps to provide Idaho’s children with an excellent education in spite of

the funding challenges. g during the IEA’s 120 years, historical circumstances have

provoked statewide debates over curriculum changes, technological evolution, the

place of patriotism in education, teachers’ rights, the role of schools in communities,

and qualification of and employment protections for teachers. g As an intensely

democratic organization from its 19th century founding, the IEA has advocated for

increasingly high levels of qualification for educators, pushing them to become better

teachers and administrators. g no matter the winds of change, the Idaho Education

Association has maintained its fundamental focus: fighting for high quality and equal

educational opportunities for all of Idaho’s children, whether special needs, gifted,

blind or deaf, or minority. g This book tells the story of the battles fought, details the

victories accomplished, and anticipates the challenges ahead.

IntroduCtIono

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The attendees at the first Idaho State Teachers’ Association Convention arrived in Boise by train in early spring 1892, bustling with excitement about

the new professional organization they were here to join. They came with curricular ideas for the children they taught and creative methods to share their knowledge with colleagues. Educational leaders in this new western state had decided only three weeks earlier that there was a need

for a statewide organization dedicated to ensuring Idaho’s children received the best education the United States could offer. State Superintendent of Public Education, Judge J. E. Harroun, called a meeting in his office on March 3, 1892, to discuss the issue with four county superintendents and, together, they called for the establishment of a permanent state teachers’ association. That day, they hatched the idea for what is now the Idaho Education Association.

1892-1926

CHAPTER 1

oThe early years of the Idaho State Teachers’ Association are replete with stories of

hope, innovation, and passion. g The events of these first few decades set the stage

for the many years to come. g The group gradually evolved from an organization

of impassioned teachers who cared deeply about improving the educational

opportunities for children across the state of Idaho to a group of members who

took concrete actions to ensure that those opportunities were available. g From

debates over curriculum and teacher certification and standards, members of the

Association demonstrated to Idaho’s policymakers that their classroom knowledge

and expertise about children’s needs were assets. g The organization proved to be

savvy about budget and organizational matters as well, advising and sometimes

lobbying the state on matters related to funding public education and how to classify

and organize the many schools throughout Idaho. g The Association recognized

that it could offer information and data on elementary, middle and high schools, as

well as the particular challenges associated with rural schools. g Throughout this

time, members focused heavily on the role of the teacher, forming a consensus that

the teacher should educate students of all ages about good citizenship and serve as

upstanding moral citizens themselves. g As time passed and teachers became more

consistently trained, the profession matured tremendously and became one of which

Idahoans could be proud and to which they owed much.

BEgInnIngS

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Teacher and students at tent school, location unknown

The atmosphere in the capital city just three weeks later was gay indeed. Harroun and his collaborators had called for the state convention of teachers and other educators to begin in Boise on March 22. Arriving in town on specially negotiated train fares, teachers gathered at the state capitol to implement Harroun’s plans and make the creation of a professional organization a reality. Governor Norman B. Willey and Boise Mayor J.A. Pinney both arrived at the gathering to speak to attendees, whose numbers were small but enthusiastic. Idaho’s promise was palpable, with its ample natural resources and growing population in a state that was less than two years old. Railroads were being extended into and throughout the state, connecting the remote and landlocked area with the rest of the West and the bustling nation. Irrigators were starting successful enterprises in the Boise Valley and across the southern half of the arid state, and with those businesses came

people and families with children. Willey spoke to the attendees about the children’s needs and about the defects of existing school laws in Idaho. To demonstrate the greatness of Idaho’s educational system, and to correct the Eastern idea that “the children of this great west are well-meaning savages,” the teachers, principals, and superintendents in attendance talked at length about the educational exhibit they would display at the World’s Fair, to be held the following year in Chicago. And most importantly, between the soprano solos and social intercourse, Superintendent Harroun appointed a five-member committee to determine the next steps toward a permanent organization. Before the convention’s conclusion, the committee’s three women and five men proposed a constitution for the newly created State Teachers’ Association of Idaho.

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From these humble beginnings in March 1892, the Idaho State Teachers’ Association’s (ISTA) adopted constitution made clear that the mission of the organization was “to promote the educational interests of the state, and to further insure the future progress of the teachers’ work as a profession.” Leaders believed that professionalizing education was the key to ensuring universal quality free public education for all of Idaho’s youth. But the goal of professionalization provoked many controversial battles during the ensuing 120 years. The 1892 convention saw the first organization-level discussions about many of the issues that teachers continually fought for during the 20th century: fair and competitive salaries and workplace conditions for teachers; increased standards and qualifications for teachers and administrators; equality of education for children no matter the wealth of their community. The ISTA believed that

without highly qualified teachers who were drawn to the state because of the competitive salaries and benefits, the education of Idaho’s children would continue to operate with a frontier mentality.

Patriotic to their core, members of the ISTA also intended the organization to be a democratic institution from the start, providing each county in the state with a representative and setting a reasonable and affordable dues schedule of $1 annually per person. They also adopted a manner of working through committees, where members would be represented and policies could be recommended to the larger body. Early committees included the constitutionally created executive and legislative committees, comprised of three and five members, respectively, with the first intended to arrange annual meetings and the second directed to “use their influence securing needed legislation such as they or this association may deem necessary for the best interests of the state.” Legislative work was deemed necessary as a tool for ensuring that Idaho’s children were being provided the best education possible, although some came to believe that schools and politics were better left apart. The Committee on Resolutions was a policy body, and the first convention’s members voted to recommend higher standards in the granting of teaching certificates and the creation of a teacher training school — known as a normal school — in Idaho. The same committee recognized and expressed disapproval of efforts by school boards throughout the state who were trying to reduce teachers’ salaries. Therefore, the committee urged educators to refuse to accept lower salaries than their predecessor when taking a new position in the state. The committee structure was a fluid one which evolved continuously as the organization faced new and challenging issues over the years.

Teacher and students at wooden school, location unknown

meanwhile, buzz over the first ISTA convention had grown throughout the week, with the Idaho Daily Statesman covering each day’s proceedings and praising the educators’ organization.

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Meanwhile, buzz over the first ISTA convention had grown throughout the week, with the Idaho Daily Statesman covering each day’s proceedings and praising the educators’ organization. Before concluding, the convention featured discussion and debate over what to teach in school, setting the stage for what would become one of the most important and long-standing functions of the organization: a platform for expressing and debating the evolving vision for education. New member teacher Miss Newton explained in her presentation that in addition to basics such as reading and math, producing moral, upstanding citizens was the goal of education. The goal of teaching morals and character to students continued to be an important one well into the 21st century, although methods remain controversial even today.

Closing its three-day meeting on March 25 and setting a time to meet again in April the following year, the group accepted an invitation from the Rapid Transit Company to ride its electric cars on an excursion to the Natatorium for a swim and a party. The celebration was no doubt lively, as teachers, principals, and administrators rejoiced over education’s new beginning in Idaho.

gETTIng SETTlEd: ThE FIrST 25 YEArS

Following the successful first meeting, leaders in the Idaho State Teachers’ Association spent the next 25 years formalizing the organization, making efforts to reach educators across the state, and taking major strides toward professionalization. As the Association’s membership grew, the group began to reach out to the National Education Association as well as to other state’s education organizations to form closer alliances. However, it also began to recognize that its members had many varied interests that could not all be addressed in a large group setting. Primary school teachers,

high school teachers, and administrators had very different everyday concerns, and the organization of the association gradually evolved to reflect those issues. The ISTA achieved the necessary flexibility in its organizational model while also working toward providing educators a voice in general policies that affected their classrooms every day, such as textbook selection, curriculum design, and content.

Over the next few years, teachers who attended the annual meetings overflowed with ideas and visions for education for Idaho’s children. As the Teachers’ Association moved its annual meeting to different parts of the state each year, it became common to feature a discussion of meatier issues related to teaching and the classroom. These meetings offered a platform where open debates could be held about the ideal teacher (and how moral he or she should be), what constituted a high school, how to teach reading, the role of music and art in the classroom, geography, civics, and the value of nature study. Participants discussed language instruction in the intermediate grades, methods of teaching, and the need for

roswell School, date unknown

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physical education. In December 1893, the Association appointed a committee to organize a State Reading Circle that could recommend “proper” books to be read across the state. The Reading Circle Board was formalized via ISTA Constitutional amendments in 1900 and charged with planning curricula related to pedagogy as well as culture. The ISTA wanted to create a streamlined education across the state, for teachers as well as for students.

TEAchErS AS rolE modElS And ThE STudEnTS’ morAl compASS

With regard to cultural issues, one of Idaho educators’ early concerns — and one that lasted for many decades — was that students receive moral guidance at school. This mandate required teachers to both act as a moral compass for their students and also teach their students about morality. At the time the State Teachers’ Association was founded in 1892, the country was steeped in Victorian purity and engaged in a lengthy and heated debate over temperance and the evil of drink. Perhaps inevitably, then, these moral issues crept into debates about education in Idaho. Some of the greatest leaders of the temperance movement were women, and, coincidentally, women also made up a high proportion of the teaching profession. In 1894, the ISTA’s annual meeting featured a

systematic report of teachers’ work and a “stronger conviction of the value of moral and religious instruction as essential elements of the education of our youth.” Along these lines, that year’s Committee on Resolutions resolved that:

“the development of the personal character of the pupils and the formation of habit in all right directions is the supreme function of the teachers. For this reason we hold that teachers should be the embodiment of those virtues that characterize the highest types of manhood and womanhood and we deprecate any conduct or habit that detracts from the dignity of the teachers as such, or as an exemplar of precepts of true morality.”

Other papers urged teachers to do “earnest and self denying work,” and to uphold higher standards and morals, including no tobacco, no intoxicating drinks, no turkey shooting, no attending baseball on Sundays, and no other reprehensible activities. According to the leaders at the time, true role models would not engage in such things.

In addition to acting as role models, the ISTA wanted educators to teach those same morals. As the ISTA continued to grow in influence into the 20th century, it recommended laws that would assist in implementing character education. In 1907, the Association recommended that state law be altered to mandate teaching the Bible in public school, and members even discussed changing the State Constitution to this effect. Such a law did not come to fruition, but the Resolutions Committee decided that, at the minimum, “non-sectarian religious instruction should not be prohibited in the public schools of Idaho.” Thus, from very early on, there was great concern with making “good American citizens,” and teachers were expected to be among the best role models available.

“…the development of the personal character of the pupils and the formation of habit in all right directions is the supreme function of the teachers. For this reason we hold that teachers should be the embodiment of those virtues that characterize the highest types of manhood and womanhood and we deprecate any conduct or habit that detracts from the dignity of the teachers as such, or as an exemplar of precepts of true morality.” — committee on resolutions, 1894

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1896, kellogg School

Good American citizens were also expected to be patriotic, and the Association focused on teaching patriotism as early as 1894. Creating good, productive citizens was a goal of the State Teachers’ Association from the start, and over the course of the Association’s 120 years, the country went through many periods when patriotism in the schools was emphasized. When discussing proper books to assign in 1894, teachers complained that the readers currently in use were unacceptable because they did not “contain selections that tend to teach patriotism.” Another teacher retorted: “We should be capable to teach patriotism without a book as morals without the Bible.” But clearly, the debate was not over whether to teach patriotism, but how. Teaching civics was

presented as one solution. Teachers declared that the “perilous time” of “class jealousy, distrust and conflict” in which they were living had resulted in a large percentage of citizens who were uninformed about the “sacredness” of governmental authority. They resolved that teaching civics would help smooth such divisions, and with “every man and woman…well versed in all that pertains to civil government,” the country would be safer.

Wartime regularly brought this issue to the fore for educators in Idaho. As tensions with Spain heated up in anticipation of what would become the Spanish American War in April 1898, the ISTA’s Committee on Resolutions recommended, and the full membership passed, a resolution in late 1897 requiring all

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educators in Idaho to fly “Old Glory” over every school house and inculcate patriotism. Some years later, when relations in Europe were strained and eventually led to World War I and the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, Idaho educators were intent on teaching students about the “meaning” of Americanism. In 1918, that meant ISTA support for the Americanization Act, a bill that would require all residents of Idaho to attain a fifth grade proficiency in English. And in 1919-1920, at the height of the country’s first Red Scare, the ISTA’s Resolutions Committee recommended a pledge of loyalty to “sane Americanism” and urged teachers to recognize the importance of their efforts in guiding students through “those principles of Americanism which have made and which will keep us a free people.” Around the same time, Kellogg’s superintendent, working in a highly charged atmosphere caused by labor unrest in north Idaho, designed an Americanism curriculum that required students in grades 1-8 to learn the Pledge of Allegiance, the flag salute, and many patriotic poems and songs.

Upper grade-school children were required to write a story explaining what it meant to be a “real American.” Such pleas for patriotic instruction dominated discussions about classroom content for many years and were especially overt during times of war.

ThE proFESSIon

The early years of the ISTA also featured critical debates over teacher qualification and teacher training. Expecting the best from their members became commonplace in the organization. When the ISTA’s fourth convention was held in Moscow in late 1894, qualifying to be a teacher required only that a person be 16 years of age or older and pass an examination by the county superintendent. There were no consistent standards for such examinations, and teaching certificates were passed out rather freely. Our children, exclaimed one convention attendee in 1894, “are protected from quack doctors but not quack teachers!”

Teachers in the Association blamed the lack of qualifications for failures in teaching, and the members of the ISTA launched a 100-year fight for more formalized training and higher qualifications as one solution to the problem. The 1894 convention began with a discussion about the issuance of permits, all agreeing that more training and experience were necessary. Compared to other states, Idaho had low expectations for its teachers’ education. The ISTA favored more professional training, even for existing members, and was thrilled with the legislature’s creation in 1893 of two normal schools designed to train teachers in Idaho. While normal school education was a good start, most agreed that it did not automatically qualify a person as a good teacher. So the ISTA — and later, the IEA — spent many

1895, Sublett School

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years trying to raise the bar so students would have the best teachers available. The goal of improved standards was not meant to erect a barrier to those entering the profession but to ensure that those who chose teaching as a career would be the best people to educate students. ISTA members wanted to create requirements so that teaching never became a fallback or temporary profession, but rather, a cherished career.

To accomplish the goal of more qualified teachers, the ISTA’s first printed legislative program, in 1898, included the organization’s successful demand that both the Lewiston and Albion normal schools be placed under a single state board that could make the programs more consistent and rigorous. The ISTA lobbied for additional changes to Idaho educator training and qualification as well, including a minimum age of 30 for the State Superintendent of Public Instruction. By the end of this early period, the ISTA was recommending further requirements with the backing of the state superintendent, Ethel Redfield. Redfield addressed the 1919 annual convention and argued that certification standards needed renewed improvement. Almost all surrounding states had passed laws requiring four-year degrees for teaching in the high schools, and she recommended that Idaho do the same. She and the ISTA lobbied for laws that would require teachers with only a normal school education (aimed specifically at teaching) and no bachelor’s degree be confined to the elementary schools. Those with four-year university degrees but no special training in early childhood education should be steered toward teaching the upper grades and kept out of the lower schools without special preparation.

Salaries were also a subject of debate for members of the ISTA. Competitive wages were viewed as a tool for attracting the best teachers and therefore providing students with

the best education. Some gains were made early on in the Association’s history. And, despite public fears about teachers joining the larger labor movement and becoming “radical” in the second decade of the 20th century, educators debated the salary issue without threat of striking. ISTA President J.J. Rae spoke freely of the salary question in 1919, hoping the legislature would set a salary schedule that would make wages consistent from district to district and county to county. Explaining the discrepancy between teachers with the lowest level certificate receiving $100 monthly while some normal school graduates received only $90, Rae strongly urged legislative action.

A major shortage of teachers in Idaho around this same time caused the organization to examine potential causes. The Committee on Professional Standards and Progress issued a report in 1920 on Idaho teacher statistics such as median ages, gender distribution, educational backgrounds, and average salaries. The “Report of the Investigation on the Teacher Shortage in Idaho” stated that there were 4,800 teachers in Idaho and identified eight prime causes of unrest among educators, including insufficient salaries, poor buildings and equipment, indefinite contracts, unpleasant social and living conditions, lack of social advantages, poor community relations, lack of institutional and professional advantages, an “absence of state consciousness,” and lack of cooperation with the state institutions in

1902, lost river School

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meeting the shortage fairly. The report called for higher salaries and better school buildings, and it urged teachers to educate the public about problems in education.

Although Idaho teachers — restless or not — never did affiliate with the larger labor movement of that era, they did begin to forge stronger relations with the National Education Association in the early 1920s as a way to establish solidarity in the profession. Members of the ISTA began to serve at the national level and attend national conventions, then returned to their state organization convinced that the NEA could unify the legitimate needs of teachers nationwide. They recommended that Idaho teachers become members of the national organization, and they urged the state association to affiliate with the NEA, a relationship that was formally created in 1920.

Salaries, standards, and the national organization would remain issues of concern for the ISTA in the years to come.

ThE IEA’S orgAnIzATIonAl EvoluTIon

While working toward major changes in standards for teachers and the other key educational issues, the organization itself had to grow and evolve to meet Idaho children’s needs. By 1896, the ISTA recognized that the increasing number of attendees at its annual gatherings translated into public approval and credibility. While the teachers still desired “more complete professional preparation,” they were pleased with the educational advancements that had been made in the state and turned to curricular concerns and organizational issues in expanding their mission. To execute on this, the 1896 convention sanctioned a five-person committee to revise the constitution for discussion at the next annual gathering.

Constitutional revision took a number of years. Small changes were made, but in 1900, members voted to draft an entirely new constitution. By the time the 15th annual meeting in 1905 rolled around, the ISTA had divided its members into sections so that educators could attend sessions relevant to their daily lives in the classroom. The Primary Section, Grammar Section, and High School Section each presented papers that dealt with topics of concern for teachers in those grades. For instance, the Primary Section, which boasted 70 attendees in 1905, discussed issues relating to teaching character and studying child development. The Grammar Section, made up of members who routinely taught intermediate-age children, discussed methods of teaching history and geography. The High School Section discussed “the problem with high school boys” and issues such as teaching science and history in high schools. In addition to meeting in sections, General Sessions allowed members of each group to meet and discuss issues relevant to all educators. East Side School, Idaho Falls area, date unknown

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This method of division continued for many years, and additional sections were added over time. In a move that reflected the politics of the day but also foreshadowed the divisions of the future, administrators created a Superintendents’ and Principals’ Section in 1907. Although collaboration between administrators and classroom teachers continued for some time, the move was a clear indication of the divergent interests of teachers and administrators. Perhaps to ease the transition and the split, the administrators did request that their section meet separately (instead of simultaneously) from the High School Section in the future, so that they could continue to benefit from attending the teachers’ sessions. While classroom teachers in all sections spent most of their meeting time at the annual conventions discussing content matter, the superintendents’ sessions focused on issues such as medical inspections in the schools (this was a major concern because of the growing understanding about the spread of communicable diseases) and educational funding legislation. The superintendents agreed in 1907 to appoint a committee to study and draft resolutions related to this point.

In addition to the Superintendents’ Section, a Rural Section was created around 1910, geared toward studying and improving rural education. Rural school life in Idaho had been a subject of concern for the ISTA since its founding in 1892. Because the vast majority of Idaho was rural at the time, and remained so for many decades to come, the ISTA felt an overwhelming obligation to serve these students with an education equal to that offered in more urban areas. Rural schools were dominated by one-room school houses in remote locations where teachers were often inexperienced, young, and required to be janitor, babysitter, woodcutter, and teacher all at once, leaving students underserved.

In addition, many rural children spent the majority of their time working — whether on family farms, mines, or other manual jobs — instead of in school. There was a definite zeal for lifting these children out of educational darkness. In 1894, the organization declared the “rural school problem” to be one in which a student was unable to “think by himself and for himself,” and members worried that rural students did not know how to think “accurately” or how to pursue good literature, a love of nature, or knowledge of our government. The ISTA deemed the solution to the problem to be “obedience to moral and civil law, through being led into a love for the freedom under them” and lobbied for a longer school year to help rural children. Yet, there was also a strong desire to keep families on farms.

The tension between the desire to maintain a nation of farmers and the simultaneous hope to improve educational opportunities often worked at odds in the state of Idaho. While members of the ISTA yearned to bring education to rural areas, Idahoans’ genuine desire to eschew urban life and help maintain America’s heritage as an agricultural nation meant rural education would be a subject of great debate. In the 1890s, farmers nationwide experienced a severe agricultural depression, and Idaho farmers were not spared. The ISTA went on record regarding the importance of educated

1902, kootenai county teachers

16

Shoshone School, date unknown

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farmers, making education affordable for them, yet still encouraging those educated in agriculture to return to the farm. Concerns over rural and agricultural education began to dominate the annual meetings by 1909. In particular, apprehension remained that children were leaving the country and heading to town for schooling because of the poor nature of rural schools. The desire to maintain a robust country population inspired the ISTA’s Rural Section to tackle issues related to the rural school’s significance to the community as well as the social importance of the country school. By 1910, the full membership agreed to appoint a legislative committee to study the problem and to lobby for laws that would change the distribution of county funds based on school population; allow high schools in incorporated towns and cities to create union high school districts (by merging multiple independent districts); and provide state funding to each school with a teacher fully employed in high school work. That year, the Association went on the record in favor of agricultural education, which would provide a formal vocational education for farmers intending to return to the land, and in 1915, thanks to the ISTA, the Idaho Legislature extended the minimum school year to seven months. Thus, the early 20th century was critical for the ISTA’s work on behalf of rural Idaho children.

The ISTA’s Rural Section was not the only one to deal with fundamental issues. The High School Section provided an equally vigorous forum for determining the vision for high school education in Idaho. At a time when only a small percentage of students continued past high school to obtain a university education, there was much debate over the intent of high school education and what it should offer. Should it be steeped in classics, or should it also offer vocational training? These questions were being debated nationally,

as well, as high schools began to serve a larger and more varied student population, many of whom had goals other than attending college. At the turn of the 20th century, the ISTA’s High School Classification Committee — which preceded the High School Section — focused on accrediting high schools so that universities would have a system by which to judge the students who emerged from them. The committee recommended that there be opportunities to attend high school for a period of one to four years. Two courses of study were recommended for the four year high school course: one was designed to prepare students for university study in science, the other for university study in humanities. The curriculum for each of these was almost identical, with five 40-minute periods per week of math, English, and history and government. However, the science course then included another five periods of science, while the humanities course included five more periods of Latin study. Just a few years later in 1904, the ISTA lobbied for free public high schools for all students. Because the high schools previously had served only a small percentage of the population, they had required tuition payments by students. Thus, in addition to spurring debate over a high school vision, the Association oversaw the implementation of this vision across the state and was critical in making it available to any student who desired the education. From this point forward, the widespread opportunity to obtain a classical education beyond age 14 differentiated American education from European education throughout much of the 20th century.

More organizational changes were on the way for the ISTA. In 1919, the Association established five committees at its annual meeting to deal with long-standing concerns for the professional organization. The Committee on Teacher Shortage would

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determine how to make the profession more attractive, what constituted a living salary for teachers, and how positions could be made more permanent. The Committee on Professional Standards and Professional Progress was charged with developing standards for the profession of teaching. The Committee on Educational Publicity would run the newly approved newsletter, The Idaho Teacher. The Legislative Committee would consider proposals for legislation and report on progress that could be achieved by legislation. The Budget Committee would steer the Association’s finances. The committees were charged with preparing reports in anticipation of the annual meeting, publishing them in the newsletter, and awaiting the votes of the Delegate Assembly.

The refined committee structure did not solve all of the problems associated with a growing organization. They needed staff. Finally, in 1925, the ISTA voted to employ an executive secretary, establish permanent headquarters in Boise, and reorganize on a more “effective” basis. In these early years, the ISTA existed rent-free in a room at the Capitol Building, moving to Room 331 in the Sonna Building on Main Street when the legislature arrived every other year. The middle years of the 20th century would see the organization grow to occupy even more space.

concluSIon

In addition to the usual standing concerns, some issues that seemed minor in these early years became much bigger debates in later years. Among these were maximum class size (recommending a maximum of 40 students for the lower grades in 1903), higher salaries, equal school funding (through a minimum county levy), and school lunches (1910). Politically, the organization got involved by lobbying for legislation that

would further their aim of a streamlined, free public education for all children in Idaho. Part of that effort involved a fight to separate the election of judges from the election of school superintendents and to remove education from the partisan political process. The official organization did not become involved in political races but was active in the government, nonetheless. This early period represented a growing awareness of the organization’s solidarity with other state’s education organizations as well as the National Education Association. Idaho members attended the NEA’s conference for the first time in 1898 and continued to be involved in the larger organization. The relationship with the National Education Association would become much tighter and more significant as Idaho came to rely more heavily on its national educational partners.

By the mid-1920s, the ISTA had evolved from its roots as a frontier organization of loosely connected teachers and administrators numbering only 40 or 50 to a powerful association of state-wide educators dedicated to the welfare of children and teachers throughout Idaho with membership numbers approaching 3,000. The Association achieved an immense amount in these early years. It implemented an educational system that was cohesive across the state, ensuring that all children could expect to receive a relatively similar education regardless of their residential location. It implemented an early set of teacher training standards, so children could be assured of a consistently qualified teacher at the chalk board. And the Association began the effort to ensure teachers could be secure in their employment with the state. Little did members know what challenges would face them in the next 15 years.

191900, cole School Boise

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SCHOOLS THEN AND NOW: LOWELL ELEMENTARY, BOISE

The teacher’s role has remained consistent for many generations, but classroom needs have changed dramatically over the years. Today, Idaho boasts many modern, state-of-the-art school buildings. Some of the most up-to-date buildings are beautiful historic schools that have undergone renovations. reusing these solid community structures reminds citizens where we started and how far we’ve come by honoring the buildings from which neighborhoods and communities have sprung.

In the late 19th century, Idaho teachers occupied log cabins, tents, or other simple and rustic structures where students gathered for instruction. Teachers in remote locations had to serve not only as academic instructors, but as wood gatherers, janitors, and disciplinarians.

In the late 1920s, the Idaho Journal of Education published an article stating that “the old boxcar type of [school] building, poorly situated, poorly lighted, and poorly ventilated is no longer tolerated.” The IEA provided floor plans for a modern school,

complete with indoor plumbing and cloak rooms. According to the article, “An adequate school plant — sanitary, spacious, cheerful — built around the needs of the child and the school, preserves the health of school children and helps to improve individual and community life and to insure a better race.” In the 1920s and 1930s, however, school districts abandoned many small, rural school houses when consolidation called for the construction of larger facilities for multi-community student bodies. In some urban settings, many communities continually remodeled and updated their neighborhood schools.

lowell Elementary in north Boise is one of those schools and represents changes to schools across the state. It has changed significantly over its nearly 100-year history. originally designed on the “unit plan” that allowed for future expansion, lowell was built in three stages. The first floor and basement were completed in 1913,

1902, lost river School

1926, lowell Elementary School

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followed by the second floor in 1917. The school initially housed only grades 1-4, and back then, lunch period lasted 90 minutes to allow students time to go home to eat. By the mid-1920s, lowell expanded up to 8th grade, and a 1926 addition on the north gave the school four more classrooms, a second-floor office, and a basement auditorium. The parent-Teacher Association started a hot lunch program in 1944, with ten tables built by volunteer fathers. with the enrollment increase following world war II, the school added playground equipment in 1946 and eight new classrooms on the south side in 1947,

as well as a library. The 1947 addition reflects the Art deco style of the period. during the energy crisis of the 1970s, another remodel lowered lowell’s ceilings, added fluorescent lighting, and installed smaller windows, all in an effort to conserve energy. In march 2006, voters approved a bond levy providing for additional upgrades and renovations to several Boise school buildings, including lowell. In 2010, new heating and cooling systems and more energy and water conservation upgrades were done. That same year, lowell added a computer lab with internet-ready SmArT Boards and projectors.

over the years, the IEA has recognized lowell for its outstanding volunteer efforts from families and staff, and the u.S. department of Education chose lowell Elementary in 1994 as a Blue ribbon School. In the 2000-2001 school year, lowell began its English language learners program, celebrating a new chapter in student body diversity. Still offering grades k-6, lowell Elementary’s motto is “Educating all students since 1913… For today and beyond.” lowell stands as an example of the dozens of Idaho school buildings that have not only endured for more than a century but have adapted to the ever-changing needs of Idaho students.

o



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IEA AND THE NEA

1898 idaho teachers attend the national education association’s convention in Washington, D.c., for the first time.

1920 The idaho state Teachers association (which changed its name to the idaho education association in 1927) affiliates with the nea.

1947-48 iea incorporates and unifies with the nea.

1968 nea provides financial and staff assistance to the iea’s efforts to impose sanctions on idaho, declaring it unethical for out-of-state teachers to take jobs in idaho.

1970 iea’s executive committee approves participation in the new nea uniserv program for hiring staff to work at the local level. Boise teacher Jack White is employed as the first uniserv director in the country. iea dubs these staff members “region directors.”

1970s northwest nazarene college student mike poe is elected student nea vice president.

1970s louise Jones, new meadows, helps found the nea Women’s caucus and the nea Women’s leadership Training program.

Since 1980

five iea members receive nea human & civil rights awards: frances paisano, lapwai — leo reano award; sonia hunt, nampa — george i. sanchez award; pete espinoza, minidoka county — george i. sanchez award; grace owens — martin luther King, Jr. award; sam cikaitoga (posthumously), fremont county — ellison onizuka award. also, an iea-nominated human rights advocate, Tony stewart from coeur d’alene, receives the h. council Trenholm memorial award.

1986 With nea’s assistance, the iea hires a full-time organizer for education support professionals.

1986 sue hovey, moscow, is elected to one of the nine positions on the nea executive committee. she is re-elected in 1989 and serves the maximum two terms of three years each.

1997 Dan sakota, rexburg, is elected to one of nine positions on the nea executive committee. he is re-elected in 2000 and serves the maximum two terms of three years each.

1997 iea implements the nea’s KeYs (Keys to excellence in Your schools) program in several idaho schools. The program continues and expands over the next few years.

2003 nea bestows its national educational support professional of the Year award on marty meyer, a coeur d’alene custodian and association activist.

2008 educator-astronaut Barbara morgan, iea member and former mccall-Donnelly teacher, receives nea’s friend of education award, the association’s highest honor.

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nEA public Schools: Fulfilling the American dream: president clinton at the national Education Association regional Assembly

1990s memorabilia

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Battling for legitimacy and credibility as an organization and a profession had occupied much of the ISTA’s effort in the first decades of the 20th century. By

1926, a great deal of work toward that end had been accomplished. The Association hired and named its first Executive Secretary that year, John I. Hillman, and, in 1927,

altered its constitution and re-branded itself the Idaho Education Association. The constitutional changes provided for seven district associations and the creation of local associations, with each local invited to send representatives to the annual Delegate Assembly in proportion to its membership in the IEA. The goal was to bring the Association to the teachers, who felt as

1926-1940

CHAPTER 2

oThe 1920s were an exciting time for the Idaho State Teachers’ Association. g The organization hired John I. hillman as the first staff member and changed the

name to reflect its broad mission for education throughout Idaho. g But just as the

Association found its legs, the depression hit with such economic force that the

organization needed a new focus: making sure that the state provided adequate

funding for education. g The depression had an immense impact on education in

Idaho. g There was a massive decline in educational funding, caused by numerous

events of the decade, not least of which were the extremely high rate of foreclosures

and the corresponding decline in property tax revenue. g The funding shortages

caused schools to close, leaving rural children, especially, with no place to attend

school. g The newly named Idaho Education Association took the state to task,

working hard to secure a funding source and hold the state accountable for its

constitutional mandate to establish and maintain free public schools. g The IEA

also worked very hard during this difficult time to make both the rural and urban

educational systems attractive to the most qualified teachers. g This meant raising

teacher certification standards and making education in Idaho more efficient. g By the time the united States entered world war II, the IEA had achieved a number

of critical successes for education in Idaho in spite of the difficult period that was

now behind it.

F IghTIng For IdAho’S chIldrEn durIng Tough TImES

25

though policy too often was created by administrators who did not understand the challenges of daily life in the classroom. The changes caused IEA membership to jump from about 60% to as high as 97% of all Idaho teachers, provoking a later columnist in the Association’s newsletter to look back on this period and declare that “the teachers took over.” In concert with the organization’s 1927 name and organizational changes, the journal published by the ISTA as The Idaho Teacher since 1919 was re-named the Idaho Journal of Education. Finally, 1927 saw the Idaho Legislature adopt the ISTA’s recommended legislation requiring at least two years of normal school education for elementary school teachers. Thus, by the late 1920s the Idaho Education Association (IEA) had succeeded in establishing itself as the leader in all educational issues with membership in the 3,000-4,000 range.

Having succeeded on many fronts, the IEA nevertheless recognized that as long as people’s vision for education evolved and changed, the Association would always work on behalf of Idaho’s children. The years between 1926 and 1940 represented a critical period for children in Idaho. Faced with serious issues related to educational funding and the worldwide Depression, Idaho educators used the clout they gained during the Association’s formative years to battle for a reliable funding source. Misuse of endowment funds combined with Depression-related declines in county property taxes left educators and lawmakers scrambling for a solution without the uncertainties and monetary discrepancies between counties as revenues from the property tax. Facing lawmakers who had never been asked to appropriate state money for education, the IEA led intense debates advocating an increased role for the state in education funding. The 1930s became a decisive period for establishing a state funding mechanism and for protecting the state endowment fund, as well as convincing state

leaders to view public education as a perpetual state obligation, not just acting as a hero during tough economic times. It was also a significant era for gains in equalization of education across and within counties, as well as improved administrative efficiencies.

Not only did the Depression bring on a funding crisis, it also created a nationwide surplus of teachers. In response to this growing problem, the IEA continued to push the State of Idaho to improve its teacher standards in the 1930s so as to discourage poorly-trained, out-of-work teachers from flooding the state and bringing the level of Idaho’s education down. As part of its continued effort toward the professionalization of education, the IEA aimed to give the State Board of Education full

1927, IEA newsletter cartoon on state education support

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power over certification standards and urged the legislature to implement a salary schedule that would attract the best and most highly qualified teachers. Finally, the IEA continued to wrestle with the best way to provide an education for all students when only 17% pursued a college education and the remainder of students went into agriculture and other vocational trades.

The IEA emerged from the rocky 1930s an even stronger organization with a wide base of support, improved status and expectations for education, and friends in the statehouse who supported its mission.

ThE dEprESSIon And ThE ImpAcT on EducATIonAl FundIng

The Depression had severe consequences for Idaho children seeking education. The IEA’s biggest struggle in the 1930s was protecting the supposedly untouchable endowment fund and creating a reliable source of funding in the face of declining property tax revenues. The majority of educational funding had always come from county property taxes, creating disparate educational opportunities from county

to county, a situation magnified by the extremely high number of farm (and other property) failures from the late 1920s through the 1930s.

Funding had been an issue since Idaho became a state in 1890. The federal government provided a land grant to Idaho, consisting of sections 16 and 36 in every township in the state. The total acreage amounted to approximately 3,000,000 acres, proceeds from which were to be used to fund public schooling. Some land exchanges were approved for remote and forested lands that were deemed useless for fundraising, and all money raised from the final inventory of land was to be placed into the state’s endowment fund, a permanent school fund. The Idaho Constitution permitted the fund to be used for loans on farm mortgages and certain types of bonds. Then, the accrued interest was applied annually to the benefit of the common schools. That interest was never enough to support annual school budgets, so the remaining demands were met through county and local district taxes. At one time, state law required county commissioners to pass a levy sufficient to raise $15 per pupil of school age, but any amount above that — up to a maximum set by law — was left up to the voters. Additional monies approved by voters above the minimum set by law could be used for necessities, such as a school wagon to transport children to school or other capital equipment. Unfortunately, the special tax limitations placed on districts prevented any desire or momentum by local school boards to raise salaries or provide more and improved equipment for classrooms. Thus, in 1920, State Superintendent Ethel E. Redfield requested the ISTA’s support for legislation that would remove caps on the maximum special levy.

1928, Teacher and students with homemade globe

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IdAho’S EndowmEnT Fund

Things got decidedly more complicated when the endowment fund came under attack.

The story began in the fall of 1928, when Idaho voters were asked to vote for a constitutional amendment (H.R. 10) which would expand the allowed uses for endowment funds. In addition to the ability to loan the money on first mortgages for improved farms within the state, as well as on state, United States, or school district bonds — all of which were provided for in the existing state constitution — the measure would increase permitted uses to include county, city, and village bonds. The IEA was gravely concerned that such expenditures would deplete endowment funds and lead to an increase in taxes to make up the difference. “Certainly we should vote against it,” the Journal urged, but the IEA also encouraged “every school man [to] see that his community has a clear understanding of the problem involved.” Despite these pleas, voters approved the amendment.

Soon thereafter, in 1928, a routine annual audit of Boise City’s Independent School District raised eyebrows about potentially missing income from state endowment funds, causing the district to investigate and question state leaders as to where the money might have gone. A few key documents divulged that concerns over state management of the endowment fund began ten years earlier during Moses Alexander’s term as Idaho’s governor between 1915 and 1919. During Alexander’s term, an official report was provided to the governor and the legislature

disclosing a $400,000 shortage in the endowment fund. Since no action was taken on the concerns raised at that time, the State Board of Education penned a letter to the succeeding Governor, C.C. Moore, insisting on answers to questions about the fund. Still, there was no

resolution and no record of the Board’s letter ever reaching the legislature.

Upon discovering the documents that indicated the existence of a longstanding problem, the Boise School Board contacted all of the Class A Independent School Districts in the state and asked them to join in a preliminary audit of the endowment funds, with a view toward a full audit (at a cost of $75,000) of the fund back to statehood. The IEA, outraged over the casual nature of the state officials’ past responses to the problem, argued that it was “unlawful for even one cent ever to be taken from these funds for any purpose… If there has been any transfer, therefore, it has been done unlawfully, and the money has been expended unlawfully.” Whether the state actually had lost money or it had been transferred to a different fund was irrelevant to educators; money had been taken

The IEA argued that it was “unlawful for even one cent ever to be taken from these funds for any purpose… If there has been any transfer, therefore, it has been done unlawfully, and the money has been expended unlawfully.”

1930, principal and students at reading table

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from the educational budget, and “the payers of school taxes have had their burden increased accordingly. If a known loss of $400,000 with a probable additional loss of from $100,000 to twice or three times that amount… does not warrant a $75,000 audit, then there has never been warrant for the audit of any account!”

Over the next ten years, the IEA aimed to unveil exactly how the endowment funds had been mismanaged and fought for renewed responsible management of the money. The Idaho Constitution’s provision for loans and bonds

to be granted from the fund had laid the groundwork for corruption and graft. The IEA discovered that hundreds of thousands of dollars from the endowment fund had been raided for many unauthorized uses, including untraced transfers to the state’s general fund and loans to state officials’ relatives. Additionally, the state had sold thousands of endowment acres to corporations despite the law’s limit of such sales to 320 acres. The potential for corruption had only increased with the passage of H.R. 10 in 1928. The IEA was saddened and disgusted with the apparent misdeeds by state officials charged with guarding the funds in trust, and it pledged to find solutions. It was widely feared that without legal protection and changes to the law, this key funding source for education in Idaho was in serious jeopardy.

By bringing the issue to the public and rattling cages until the issues were resolved, the IEA and the Idaho School Trustees’ Association tried to ensure a protected endowment fund for Idaho’s children. In editorial after editorial in the late 1920s, the IEA took the legislature to task for an inadequate appropriation for the audit and demanded that the constitution

be amended to repeal recent allowances for expenditures on city and village bonds. The Association also called for a repeal of the Farm Mortgage Fund and recommended that a study be made on “the farm loan problem.” If the farm loans were to continue with these funds, the Association argued, there had to be drastic reforms in loan procedures, for while the state constitution allowed such loans, they had historically resulted in losses to the fund. Furthermore, the IEA came out against the law that allowed for the sale (at less than $10 per acre) of lands obtained by foreclosure. Shocked by the blatant dishonesty of state officials, the IEA deployed a great deal of rhetoric in the fight. They referenced Diogenes and his search for an honest man with a lantern in broad daylight and pointed to the folly of providing character education in the schools while “the attitude of the people toward this heritage is in doubt.” Still, the pleas fell on deaf ears.

1930, Students in line for health inspections

1930, Teachers working in the community

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When the stock market crashed in 1929 and the country plummeted into a headlong financial depression that lasted for a decade, the implications of Idaho’s farm loan provision were more readily apparent. By the early 1930s, the IEA estimated that permanent education funds were losing between $90,000 and $100,000 annually from farm loans, and that as much as 40% of the monetary value of the farm loans was nonproducing because of foreclosure or a failure to pay either interest or principal. The mismanagement of education funds was a subject in the 1932 gubernatorial campaign, when both Republican and Democratic candidates offered opinions about the debacle in their paid political advertisements. That year, the Democrat, Ben Ross, won.

In the meantime, long-term changes were in the works. Trustees from the Boise School District had filed a lawsuit against the state of Idaho to force a return of endowment fund money taken for the Farm Mortgage Fund. While the lawsuit was making its way through the courts, the IEA’s new Endowment Committee came up with a variety of recommendations for reform. The first was an effort to better control who served on the State Board of Land Commissioners. The IEA hoped for a more permanent body and personnel and, toward that end, suggested that the Idaho Supreme Court appoint members for lengthy terms and include a justice from

the Supreme Court as well as a member from the State Board of Education. The Association urged the legislature to grant the Land Board complete control of the endowment funds and to require that body to provide an annual report of endowment transactions to the legislature. Furthermore, the organization advocated discontinuing investments that had resulted in losses and called for a repeal of laws that diverted principal or income of endowment funds for non-educational use.

Despite the disclosure of the abuse of the permanent school fund, the laws did not change until the end of the 1930s. The Idaho Supreme Court did rule in 1934 that amendments to the constitution providing for endowment funds to be invested in state warrants and school district bonds were unconstitutional, but by 1937, the Idaho Legislature had done very little to stop the misuse and “rape” of endowment money in the law. To the pleasure of the IEA, individuals serving on the Land Board made great strides toward discontinuing the old policy

1930, napping children in school

1930, Feeding children during the depression, snacking at school

“Equality of educational opportunity is the birthright of every American child.” — IEA Journal, 1927

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of investing money in patently unsafe ways, but the laws prohibiting such investments had not changed dramatically. Therefore, the IEA maintained its long list of objectives to accomplish at the statehouse, but ultimately it was left to depend on the goodwill of those serving on the State Land Board for most of the 1930s. As the decade progressed, other financial issues floated to the top of the IEA’s heap of battles, and the organization began to flank the funding issue from another angle.

STATE FundIng For EducATIon And EquAlIzATIon

Even before the Depression hit, the IEA recognized and struggled with the fact that the State of Idaho did not provide a single bit of funding to educate Idaho’s children, despite the state’s constitutional mandate for the legislature to “establish and maintain a general, uniform, and thorough system of public, free common schools.” As self-appointed visionary and watchdog for the state’s schoolchildren, the Association faced the issue head-on and argued that the state was shirking its responsibility to educate its citizens.

By leaving the majority of funding up to the counties and offering no state contribution, the state had allowed vast inconsistencies in educational opportunities between counties.

The disparity between rich and poor children and their differing access to a quality education grew over time. In 1927, the IEA proclaimed in its Journal that “Equality of educational opportunity is the birthright of

every American child.” Idaho’s sole reliance on the endowment fund and property taxes, in conjunction with its poor method of federal fund distribution and the state law’s discrepancy between the levy allowed for common versus independent school districts, made the counties unable to provide equal education either within their counties or across the many counties in the state. All districts utilized the mill formula for levies, in which a mill represented 1/1000 of a currency unit — in this case, the United States dollar. Common school districts, typically found in rural areas where students of many ages were taught by a single teacher, were permitted to levy only up to 10 mills on property values, but independent districts, usually found in wealthier urban areas, were allowed a 30-mill levy. Yet the Association’s research team found that many courts had ruled in favor of educational uniformity in public schools. Therefore, the IEA concluded that state intervention was needed, because “the rich sections tax themselves… lightly to provide very good schools, while the poor ones tax themselves very heavily and still do not provide satisfactory educational opportunities.” The IEA ran myriad articles over the next few years showing calculations and disparities of tax amounts, and pleading with voters that “the school tax situation demands careful study and analysis and scientific adjustment, which only selfish

The IEA’s first success on behalf of state funding came in 1933, when the Idaho legislature passed house Bill 157, Idaho’s first official education equalization act.

a. 1932, coeur d’Alene primary student with crepe paper dress she designed and made as one of the projects in ms. Bayne’s class

b. 1933, hailey harmonica band from hailey central School, music education

c. 1934, play day at Albion normal School

d. 1930, primary school projects in coeur d’Alene. practical art and number work were achieved by this method

e. 1939, home economics for boys

f. 1939, one horse power school bus, rural district

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a.

d.

f.

c.

e.

b.

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and unpatriotic interests can oppose.” The Association found that other states provided appropriate annual funds for public schools, while Idaho provided no revenue source for the elementary schools, and merely matched federal funds for vocational work in high schools to the tune of less than one percent (1%). Idaho was, according to the IEA, dodging its duty to educate its citizens.

The Depression highlighted the funding problem more than ever. Discrepancies grew in the face of failing properties and increasing foreclosures, resulting in lower funding from property taxes. Rural schools were forced to close because there was no money for teachers or maintenance of properties. As the problem compounded, the IEA advocated two related policy changes. First, the organization pushed for a state funding mechanism that was not tied to property taxes. Second, the IEA urged that any appropriated state money be used for equalizing education across the counties.

Using its newsletter, the Idaho Journal of Education, the IEA forcefully put forth its ideas. First it pointed out that while it appeared that mines, lumber, and public utilities bore the biggest burden of school funding, in fact it was “the average property owner pay[ing] the far greater part of the taxes — the farmer, the stockraiser, the average businessman, the home owner in the city.” It was time, said the IEA, for the state to take the burden off the property owner. In 1930, the organization’s new Equalization Tax Committee noted that “cheapness does

not make for excellency” and recommended raising new sources of state revenue. Ideas that were floated included a graduated income and inheritance tax, or luxury and natural resource taxes. Association President John W. Condie suggested diverting a share of the discovery and development of the state’s natural resources to education.

The IEA’s first success on behalf of state funding came in 1933, when the Idaho Legislature passed House Bill 157, Idaho’s first official education equalization act. Having experienced the closure of multiple rural schools due to a lack of funds in 1932-1933, the state finally was motivated to help. The new law required each district to levy an additional minimum of 3 mills and pledged state money to make up the difference until each classroom unit had a budget of $800. In years when state funds were unavailable, the Education Board was given authority to apportion the percentage of available money. The IEA was happy with the legislation for two reasons. First, the Idaho law guaranteed a minimum financial program, while similar laws in other states were conditional. Second, the county levy was flexible, making it possible to reduce county property tax by substituting state revenue when available. However, the IEA did see flaws in the legislation. An editorial argued that the law would not benefit wealthy counties or classroom units, but that the law provided “a very fine foundation” for the distribution of state funds. In practice, the law worked well from the start. Before the law’s passage, at least 30 schools had closed due to lack of funds. But during the two years after the law’s passage, none were forced to shut down. For some of the poorest schools, the law had cut the property tax levy in half and was credited with saving education in these counties.

“organization of education for efficiency, with equalization of opportunity is the underlying principle — a square deal for every underprivileged child.” — IEA president John w. condie, 1931

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However, the IEA viewed the state’s meager initial appropriation and a lack of secure and permanent funding as a challenge to lobby for a reliable funding source. An incredible 91.6% of the state’s school revenue was still generated by property taxes, and it was predicted that if the state would approve $2.5 million in permanent funding, county levies could be reduced even further. The fact remained that “the wealth per classroom unit… of the richest county is 320 per cent of that of the poorest.” Therefore, the IEA advocated raising the $2.5 million by passing some of the tax options mentioned above and by moving toward greater equalization and a more even distribution of funds.

As the struggle to obtain permanent funds went forward, the IEA researched and led debates over the best way to raise the money. The Association discussed annual appropriations from the General Fund (seen as subject to the whims of the legislature and therefore unreliable), earmarked dollars, and money from specific taxes. As a result, the state experimented with many taxes during the 1930s, including the first sales tax passed in 1935 at a rate of 2% on retail purchases (repealed by voters shortly thereafter), a tax on mines, and another one on alcohol. The alcohol tax that passed in the 1930s began an income stream for schools that has lasted for close to 80 years. But the voters’ repeal of the sales tax led the IEA to conclude that the state had not lived up to the promise of the equalization mandate. The organization settled upon reviving the sales tax law as the best method to provide income for equalization among the schools and lobbied hard for it as the chosen method to complete the equalization program.

rurAl SchoolS: conSolIdATIon And TEAchEr TrAInIng

Funding was not the only issue affecting the efficacy of rural schools. The Depression era also unveiled the degree to which rural school children were underprivileged when it came to qualified and experienced teachers as well as a consistent educational program. At the end of the 1920s, statistics on Idaho public schools showed just how serious the rural school problem was, with Idaho possessing 70 four-room schools, 62 three-room schools, 198 two-room schools, and a truly overwhelming 820 one-room schools. Data also showed that at the state level, Idaho provided little supervision over these rural schools, so there was great inconsistency between these schools and their teachers compared with those in more urban settings. For instance, the Idaho State Board of Education found that 90% of teachers in rural schools met only minimum certification requirements of nine weeks of training. Those

1939, Teacher and students reading

34

same schools also employed 83% of teachers with only one year of training. Therefore, it was clear that children in those schools were at a distinct disadvantage. Of course, more basic problems existed as well, such as poor heating and no libraries. The IEA set out to fix these wide-ranging problems.

At the crux of the rural school issue was lack of organization and inefficiencies, which caused fiscal problems. In 1927, Idaho had 1,400 individual districts, which in turn meant 1,400 boards of education and 4,800 board members. Of these districts, almost half provided only seven months instead of nine months of schooling annually. In addition to those staggering and worrisome numbers, Idaho employed 4,400 teachers and served 120,000 pupils. Many of these pupils were educated in one-room schools where there were often fewer than 20 students. This was a highly inefficient way to spend precious funds, since a teacher’s salary was the same whether he or she taught 10 students or 40. Consolidation of students into fewer schools, as in a city system, would reduce salary costs by more than half. Consolidation would have other benefits, as well, and solve the most grievous of rural school problems while making the overall system less cumbersome and costly. The IEA created a Rural Organization Committee to study and report on the issue.

By 1929, some rural school problems were waning. To begin with, the change in teacher training requirements had gone into effect, requiring at least two years of schooling for all teachers. The number of rural school supervisors had doubled, as well. But the costs for educating rural children were still twice that of urban children, and rural teachers still departed sooner than city teachers. IEA President John W. Condie addressed the Delegate Assembly at the end of 1930 stating, with all due respect to the nation’s educational

roots in the “little red schoolhouse,” the time had come for larger, more organized school systems. One-teacher schools cost $13.09 per month, two-teacher schools cost $11.35 per month, but the cost of a nine-teacher school was only $6.61 per month. Tiny, rural schools were costly, while merged, larger schools were better for communities, students, and the economy. The situation, said Condie, called for drastic reorganizational measures. The newly formed IEA Committee on Rural Organization called for the cooperation of the Idaho School Trustees’ Association, the county superintendents, and the Idaho Grange to help with rural school reform.

In 1933, the legislature passed a consolidation bill, permitting three different methods for district and temporary school consolidations. With authority granted but detailed plans still lacking, the IEA’s Rural Organization Committee recommended a survey that would determine consolidation possibilities, institute an adequate plan of rural supervision, and provide standard requirements for rural school grounds/buildings. By this time, the National Education Association was also heavily invested in rural school issues, having convened a national conference on the issue and supporting federal funding for rural school development. After Idaho passed the consolidation law, more consolidations occurred than during the previous decade, lowering the cost per pupil, creating better schools for rural students, and better distributing available resources. As consolidation began to occur, providing transportation for these far-flung students presented a new and unanticipated challenge, but it was minor compared with the challenge schools had just overcome.

35

Rural children continued to suffer under less experienced teachers who often departed after a few short years. The IEA continued to push for higher levels of training throughout the 1930s to counter the trend and constantly asked the legislature to grant authority to the State Board of Education to establish certification rules related to teaching so as to provide consistency and rigor. The Association advocated an additional year of training for elementary school teachers, higher standards for principals and superintendents, college degrees for high school teachers, and the elimination of overlapping training programs between the universities and the normal schools. Eventually, these requirements would come to pass thanks to the persistence of the IEA, and rural children would be afforded the same opportunities as those in more populated areas.

concluSIon

The IEA made some organizational changes toward the end of the 1930s and altered the dues schedule to raise additional money to handle the growing organization. Toward the end of the 1930s, some major progress was made on

the issues of the decade. In 1939, voters passed additional equalization laws as well as an amendment to the Idaho Constitution requiring the safe investment of endowment funds. The legislature also approved a law that removed farm loans from the list of legal investments for endowment funds, a law that voters solidified through another constitutional amendment in 1940. The IEA moved into the 1940s with a goal of passing a new sales tax and spreading the responsibility for education funding among the whole population of Idaho, not just the property holders.

The IEA also initiated discussion in the 1930s about other issues that would become more significant to the profession during the following 20 years. Although increased salaries were not a particularly popular topic during the Depression, some advances were made in the late 1930s to bring

teacher salaries up to a meaningful level. The IEA’s Salary Schedule Committee urged a single salary schedule in all school districts and recommended the study of a minimum salary law. Additionally, the first discussion of a longer “tenure” for teachers occurred during this era, and in 1939, the IEA’s Teacher Retirement Committee recommended an intensive study of retirement options over the next year and

a more prominent place on the legislative agenda. These issues came to dominate the debate over education in Idaho during the 1940s and 1950s, as World War II imposed an entirely new set of circumstances on the educational system.

1937, proposed salary schedule designed to keep teachers in Idaho

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As World War II imposed chaos on domestic life in the United States, Idaho’s educational system suffered. After a decade in which many teachers

found themselves unemployed or severely underpaid, they suddenly had ample jobs and many alternative opportunities. The IEA discovered that Idaho’s teachers were leaving the state in droves for brighter horizons

elsewhere, either in the form of teaching jobs in neighboring states or war-related manufacturing jobs, which paid significantly higher wages. As these challenges became evident, the IEA’s revised mission was clear: keep good teachers in Idaho!

The IEA spent the 1940s concentrating its efforts on maintaining a quality teaching force in Idaho. The organization realized that to take care of Idaho’s children, it had to focus

1940-1963

CHAPTER 3

owith the onset of world war II, Idaho went from having a glut of teachers and a

serious funding problem to being a state with a teacher shortage and a loud cry

for increased salaries. g wartime mobility, the sudden availability of high-paying

war-related jobs, and the subsequent postwar baby boom caused major teacher

shortages across Idaho. g The state handed out emergency permits to barely

qualified people who were willing to take on a classroom during the national

emergency, and schools drastically cut back on class offerings. g The shortage

of teachers led the IEA to lobby for a great number of reforms, including the

creation of a retirement system, minimum salaries, continuing contracts, improved

certification requirements, and even further consolidation of school districts. g The work of the IEA during this period led to the organization’s growing recognition

that it could not remain outside of politics, since so many of these changes were

created as law at the statehouse. g As part of this evolution, the IEA made changes

within its own structure in order to affect a better relationship with the national

Education Association and to involve its own membership. g By the time the 1960s

rolled around, the IEA was clear on its modern mission and what it needed to do

for Idaho’s educational system. g And it was organizationally prepared for the

political fights that were to come.

kEEp ThE TEAchErS hErE!

37 Teacher and student at brick school, rural district

38

on Idaho’s teachers. In the words of one IEA President, “Child welfare and teacher welfare [are] inseparably connected.” During a time when the country’s standard of living was increasing rapidly and teachers departed for alternative professional options that would provide a better living, the children suffered because of the resulting poor education. “We cannot be sincerely concerned with the interests of boys and girls in this state,” he continued, “and at the same time minimize the importance of those factors which help to secure and retain the services of better-qualified teachers.” The IEA helped legislators

realize it was up to them to entice teachers to remain in Idaho. With the IEA leading the way, lawmakers focused first on salary and retirement legislation.

At the start of the decade, Idaho’s school districts had limited options for raising their teachers’ salaries. There were no state monies provided, and the legislature had, many years before, capped levies that counties and school districts could impose. Furthermore, state law prohibited districts from incurring debt beyond 95% of

anticipated revenues. Without changes in the state law, raising salaries would be nearly impossible for individual districts. At a 1944 special session, the legislature enacted two measures meant to help with the low salaries and teacher shortage in Idaho. One measure provided county

commissioners the ability to levy an additional tax to raise teacher salaries and, if necessary, ask the state for additional assistance. The other provided for a state appropriation of up to $100,000 to aid needy districts. But the actions of the 1944 Legislature may have been too little, too late, since it was discovered that many teachers had already departed for better paying jobs elsewhere.

By the following year, lawmakers took further steps to make teaching in Idaho more attractive. The newly created Idaho Education Council (of which the IEA was a part) together with the governor-appointed Education Committee prepared a plan to complete Idaho’s equalization program. The Council recommended the state appropriate a per-classroom budget minimum of $135 per month for elementary units and $175 per month for high school, along with a minimum transportation program of $2 per student per month for students transported more than two miles. The proposal also included an increase in district and county levy limits and a minimum teacher salary set at $133 per month. Finally, the recommendation included maximum classroom sizes of 30 for larger elementary schools and 22 for one-room schools, with high school maximums set at 23 pupils and 8 pupils respectively for larger schools and one-teacher high schools. Not all of these recommendations were passed into law. However, the legislature did increase the allowable levy amount, raised the state’s

“we cannot be sincerely concerned with the interests of boys and girls in this state,” he continued, “and at the same time minimize the importance of those factors which help to secure and retain the services of better-qualified teachers.”

1944, wrigley’s gum advertisement, Idaho Education Association newsletter

39

“don’t walk out on the school children of Idaho by leaving the profession or by deserting to another state with a better program… Stay with us and make the fight. Idaho’s children are entitled to the same educational heritage as the children of other states. Stand by them. roll up your sleeves and battle for the cause. Your own welfare is an important factor; you need not hesitate to enlist in the fight for that, also.” — IEA president howard Andrews, 1945

minimum program by 30%, and provided assistance to all districts that requested extra money to fund increased salaries. A subsequent study of median annual salaries showed improvement ($200 higher than the previous year), with high school teacher salaries inching closer to other states. Although elementary salaries were still on the low side, the IEA nonetheless concluded that “the future for education in Idaho looks much brighter.”

Little did they know that 4,200 Idaho teachers already had left the profession during the war for higher salaries, job security in the form of a fair workplace, and “old-age security.” By 1945, Idaho remained one of only a handful of states that had not enacted retirement legislation for teachers. And the meager salary increases provided by the state and districts had not even approached the cost-of-living increases during the war. The IEA found that the cost of living during World War I had risen 108%, and that World War II had resulted in an increase of another 31%. So many people left the profession that by December 1944 there were 539 emergency teachers working in the state, and 978 by the end of the school year in June 1945. By the end of the following school year, the number had jumped to 1,200. The emergency certificates were granted to virtually anyone, leaving many students with inexperienced, untrained teachers.

The IEA nevertheless implored career teachers to stick it out. In the words of IEA President Howard Andrews: “Don’t walk out on the school children of Idaho by leaving the profession or by deserting to another state with a better program… Stay with us and make the fight. Idaho’s children are entitled to the same educational heritage as the children of other states. Stand by them. Roll up your sleeves and battle for the cause. Your own welfare is an important factor; you need not hesitate to enlist in the fight for that, also.”

Despite the fear of losing teachers, Helen Moore, president of the IEA’s classroom teacher group, wrote a column in which she expressed sympathy for the teacher who chose to leave the classroom for farming or any other profession, while she also made some pointed comments to policymakers. In a comparison of jobs, she showed that the average yearly income for Idaho farm workers in 1945-46 was $2,068, while elementary school teachers averaged only $1,534. A frustrated Moore explained: “The person who does not wish to feed hogs can do better in any other profession than at teaching.” Coal mining would provide an annual salary of $2,996; bus driving $2,465; and telephone operation $2,126. Moore suggested that Idaho undergo a complete survey of education in the state and come up with a plan to address these discrepancies and keep our best teachers here.

The IEA lobbied the legislature hard for a retirement program that would persuade teachers to stay. Although the IEA proposed a program to the 1939 legislative session, the 1940 session, the 1941 session, and each year following, the lawmakers did not make it a priority and could not agree on its provisions until 1946. When the teacher shortage emergency became clear at the end of 1945, the state’s leaders were finally ready to act. By then, 47 states and the Territory of Hawaii had implemented retirement programs for their teachers, but Idaho still had

40

“In view of the fact that Idaho is the only state in the union that has not protected its teachers with a retirement law, it is quite clear that no research is necessary to determine that the state must take action.” — Idaho School Survey commission, 1945

not. The Idaho School Survey Commission, appointed in 1945, considered the problem and prepared new legislation, and some opined that “in view of the fact that Idaho is the only state in the Union that has not protected its teachers with a retirement law, it is quite clear that no research is necessary to determine that the state must take action.” The IEA approved hiring an actuary to outline a sound retirement plan, and IEA Executive Secretary John Hillman stressed, “One hard fact should be emphasized. A retirement program is compensation for service rendered, not charity.” Retirement allowances were based on pay, he explained, and the basic principle of retirement plans had been firmly established by industrial programs, other states’ teacher retirement laws, and the Federal Social Security Program. The 1945 proposal suggested a minimum retirement age of 60 (with compulsory retirement at 70) and provided benefits, administration, fund management, guaranty, fraud protection, and membership limitations. However, there was a question as to who would pay for the program, with some citizens suggesting a program fully funded by the teachers. The IEA warned that “an attempt is already underway to shift the entire cost of the public’s share of the program to the individual school districts, for school district employees. This would require ten times as heavy a tax in the poorer districts, for a program that is the responsibility in equal measure of all taxpayers alike.” The IEA firmly believed that the state should share in the cost of such a program.

In February 1946, Governor Arnold Williams called the 28th Legislature into Extraordinary Session. It was an off year for the biennial legislature, but the reasons for Williams’ decision were threefold, with the third pertaining to the critical shortage of teachers in Idaho. To address teacher retention, the legislators produced and passed House Bill No. 10, which finally created a teachers’ retirement system for Idaho. It was a voluntary system, however, and only 2,000 of the approximately 4,500 eligible teachers had enrolled in the program by that fall. Lawmakers and educators tweaked the program a bit the following year. Although efforts to include custodial and clerical education workers in the Idaho Teachers’ Retirement System failed, other improvements were made. The first was to exempt retirement allowances from Idaho income tax; another

1956, chart showing enrollment growth in the wake of the postwar baby boom, Idaho Education Association newsletter

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allowed beneficiaries to receive half the retiree’s final compensation (and all of the accumulated contributions) if the retiree died while on leave or within four months of retirement; yet another allowed the 15 years of required service to accumulate during non-consecutive years. Additional improvements enabled certain funding at the county level.

For the ensuing 17 years, the retirement plan did not change significantly, although the system was frequently under attack and even jeopardized by lack of state appropriations. In the early 1950s, the state superintendent and State Board of Education took over management of the fund, eliminating the Retirement Board and providing a more secure financial footing. The IEA considered the assurance of a sound retirement to be “a major factor in holding teachers in Idaho during the grave teacher shortage.”

Even so, the Association spent a good deal of time in the 1950s defending the system from politicians who wanted to cut or even eliminate public funding.

Fortunately, the legislature had appointed a School Survey Commission, which was charged with exploring the problem of teacher shortages and making additional recommendations for improvement. The Commission in turn contracted experts at Peabody College to assist with the surveys, and the final report strongly urged the adoption of the retirement program as outlined above. Other areas of the survey pointed to the continued challenge for rural schools of teacher shortages and lack of teacher experience. Commission chair Asher Wilson stated, “We cannot be expected to have, and in fact we do not have, very many teachers in the elementary rural schools whose education fits them to be first class instructors. The main reason is that the pittance given for such instruction is in many instances not worthy of being called a salary, and the teacher must at the close of the school year seek employment during the vacation months, to keep soul and body together until another term starts.” But by the close of 1946, some additional progress had been made. A number of Idaho schools had adopted a single salary schedule, which gave all teachers of the same experience and training the same salary regardless of whether they taught in the lower

1956, chart showing low Idaho teacher salaries, Idaho Education Association newsletter

“The main reason [for the shortage] is that the pittance given for such instruction is in many instances not worthy of being called a salary, and the teacher must at the close of the school year seek employment during the vacation months, to keep soul and body together until another term starts.” — School Survey commission chair, Asher wilson, 1946

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or upper grades. In fact, only five schools retained the old, position-type schedule that paid a lower grade teacher less than a higher grade teacher.

The year 1947 brought even more significant changes when the Peabody Report was issued. The report contained a number of recommendations, most all of which the 1947 Legislature adopted. Upon the IEA’s recommendation that year, a considerable number of districts finally adopted a salary schedule to bring the lowest annual salary up to $1800. Then, other major changes involved certification requirements, salaries, and state funding. The report agreed with the IEA’s long-held stance that the State Board of Education should determine and set certification standards and agreed that only

the Board should issue teaching certificates. The report also recommended much higher training standards for teachers, setting a date of September 1955 after which applicants for a teaching certificate would be required to have four years of accredited college work for certification, regardless of the grade they intended to teach. The many emergency certificates issued during the war were put on an expiration schedule, and the report recommended that any future provisional certificates be based upon two years of college and not issued to last more than three years. The report also recommended the closure of the Albion Normal School, since it would no longer be needed to issue three-year teaching certificates, as well as the creation of a four-year program at the University of Idaho-Southern Branch in Pocatello.

The 1947 changes truly represented an overhaul of Idaho’s education system and set the stage for even greater improvements, including higher salaries in 1951 and continuing contract legislation in 1955, both intended to make Idaho more attractive to the teaching profession. In the early 1950s, Idaho remained one of only a handful of states that did not offer teachers continuing contracts. The IEA lobbied for such a law because they wanted teachers to be able to practice their profession in the best interests of their students, shielded from individuals with non-education related agendas. Unfortunately, teachers too often found themselves embroiled in conflicts that had nothing to do with student learning, for example, the political or religious beliefs of teachers versus those of school leaders or powerful community patrons, personal relationships, and even the color of one’s skin. After many years, the IEA succeeded in convincing the Idaho Legislature to pass the first continuing contract law in 1955. The initial law, which was intended to “improve the employment security of teachers,” provided teachers with

1956, chart showing Idaho salaries versus other western states, Idaho Education Association newsletter

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a fair process in the event of non-renewal of an employment contract and required districts to notify teachers by March 1 if they did not intend to re-hire them the following year. Distinct from the tenure system offered in higher education, the continuing contract law simply provided a process to ensure that teachers were evaluated solely on their success as professional educators. As the law was amended over time, it provided teachers who had been in the same school district for more than three years the following basic fair employment assurances: an evaluation by her/his supervisor at least annually; a written notice of any deficiencies detected; assistance in correcting those deficiencies and a reasonable period of time to do so; written notice if the deficiencies were not adequately corrected; and an opportunity for a due process hearing before the local school board prior to a decision not to re-employ. For the rest of the 20th century and into the 21st, the law provided school trustees, administrators, and teachers with a clear framework for fairly assessing a teacher’s professional practice. The legislation also provided some level of job security, another policy originally aimed at keeping teachers in the state. By 2011, much had changed, however, and this statute was repealed by the Idaho Legislature. (See Chapter 5.)

cIrclIng ’round: EducATIonAl FundIng And ThE SAlES TAx

One problem noted particularly in the 1947 Peabody Report was funding. The head of Idaho’s School Survey Commission explained that the sharp decline in school attendance after the 8th grade was an especially significant problem in rural areas and that lack of funding created hardship for rural elementary schools. He identified a rural elementary school in Twin Falls County “that

[was still] legally unable to raise sufficient money to pay teachers, furnish instructional material, fuel for heat, and other necessary equipment.” He also pointed out that the district had seen a 300% increase in its student body, yet existing laws had not anticipated such growth. The $11 million annual cost of operating Idaho’s schools paired with the meager $1.5 million annual state appropriation left approximately $9.5 million to be raised by counties and districts to make up the gap. Even with the equalization legislation of the 1930s, the burden of paying for education fell heaviest on farmers and homeowners.

1960, Idaho Education Association billboard

1963, Idaho Education Association newsletter cartoon pointing to teacher shortage

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By the 1950s, the funding problem had finally caught the attention of lawmakers. The legislature created an Interim Tax Structure Committee, which concluded that the existing Idaho tax structure was inadequate and that change was needed to remain competitive in a time of an expanding economy. Many other states had adopted a sales tax during the Depression, but Idaho voters’ rejection of the sales tax in a referendum in 1935 caused elected officials to steer clear of the issue. Not anymore. The lack of consistent revenue required legislators to seriously consider the options, and a sales tax was at the top of the list. The October 1956 issue of the Idaho Education News was devoted entirely to the issue of state funding for public schools. While the publication acknowledged that Idaho and its legislators had made some great strides, it confronted the fact that Idaho

was still suffering some severe educational shortcomings. The article cited statistics showing that Idaho’s public schools had 35,000 more students in 1956 than in 1946 thanks to the baby boom, and the state had added more than 1,200 teachers in that time. Full-page ads in the Idaho Education News extolled the virtues of education and proclaimed that “good schools mean good business!” A new revenue stream was important because teachers were still leaving Idaho. As recently as the 1954-55 school year, 20% of Idaho teachers had relocated, some moving within the state, many leaving the state for higher wages, and others leaving the profession entirely. To make matters worse, the majority of departing teachers were the most highly qualified. Teachers taking up positions in other states averaged a salary increase of $670 per year, and one article explained that although Idaho had consistently increased its contribution to the minimum

funding program, the percentage of state contribution to the total public school budget was in fact lower than it had been in 1948.

In 1960, the IEA detailed the reasons it — together with the Idaho Congress of Parents and Teachers and the Idaho School Trustees’ Association — favored a state sales tax in lieu of property taxes or increased income tax rates as a sole revenue stream. Each sales tax percentage point was expected to raise between $8-9 million annually and would place Idaho in a more competitive position for attracting and retaining teachers. Teaching in other states remained more attractive because salaries continued to be much higher than Idaho’s. Despite the IEA’s support of the sales tax, in 1961, the legislature defeated a 3% sales tax bill that would have reduced the income tax and county property taxes.

1963, declaration of a new code of ethics for educators, Idaho Education Association newsletter

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“…divisive forces have tried to convince school trustees that the Idaho Education Association has been leading them around ‘by the nose.’ This attempt to ‘divide and conquer’ has been planned deliberately by those who either oppose the legislative program of the unified Educational council or who find necessary tax increases for education to be distasteful.” — IEA Executive Secretary Elmer crowley, 1962

The sales tax was extremely controversial, even within the educational community. The IEA continued to support passage of the tax, since the Association advocated 50% state support for education and deemed it critical that a tax of this sort provide the revenue. Executive Secretary Elmer Crowley encouraged members to help the Association become more effective with the legislature on this policy by becoming more politically active, including possibly serving in the legislature. He also recommended that, in addition to teaching about great battles and the like, teachers educate their students about the history of public schools as a way of building support for education and the sales tax. He wrote: “Both education and armed conflict have played significant roles in the destiny of this nation, but where do we teach about the contribution the public schools have made to the well-being of the United States and the world?” In an early 1962 newsletter, Crowley reported on high tension between the trustees and the IEA over the sales tax. The Idaho School Trustees Association had failed to reaffirm support for a sales tax at its 1962 annual convention. Crowley explained that, for years, “divisive forces have tried to convince school trustees that the Idaho Education Association has been leading them around ‘by the nose.’ This attempt to ‘divide and conquer’ has been planned deliberately by those who either oppose the legislative program of the Unified Educational Council or who find necessary tax increases for education to be distasteful.” The IEA interpreted the Trustees’ lack of support for the sales tax to be the first step in the dissolution of the UEC, and Crowley quoted the Trustees’ Association president who declared that trustees should be kept “separate from all other educational

bodies in the eyes of the public.” Although Crowley urged unification of the organizations in order to bring about positive changes and legislation, cooperation did not appear likely.

concluSIon

Although it took a rather drastic exodus of teachers to inspire change, the 1940s and 1950s were generally a positive era for education in Idaho. Standards were raised, salaries increased, and schools were consolidated for more consistency and efficiency. Perhaps most importantly, fair workplace conditions were instituted for Idaho’s teachers, including a voluntary teacher retirement program that provided teachers with a degree of “old age security” and a continuing contract law that gave teachers the security to conduct long-term planning for their classrooms and careers. All of these changes were made at the behest of the Idaho Education Association to ensure that the children of Idaho had the best teachers available. The solid footing would help Idaho’s public educational system face the challenges of the turbulent 1960s and 1970s.

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TECHNOLOGY AND SCHOOLS

Today, computers, televisions, and Internet access are a common part of the classroom experience. But utilizing technology to improve education was an IEA goal long before IBm invented the first computer in 1981. As early as 1940 the IEA worked with Boise Junior college to sponsor an Instructional Film library, whose goal was to “bring about improved school techniques in the use of films as well as educational programs.” A preview committee selected a basic library of 100 educational films suitable for all grades on various subjects.

Bringing new content to lessons was the first aim of technology. The IEA found a way to deliver new lessons to far-flung schools through a project called the mobile lab. Beginning in 1975, the Association’s Instruction and professional development committee sponsored it. The mobile lab delivered a group of master teachers to schools around the state. The teachers offered practical workshops on a variety of topics, including art, local history, math, and environmental science. Educators with the mobile lab introduced new lessons not only to students but also to teachers through workshops in classroom management, paper grading, and methods for teaching children with special needs.

The computer age changed education nationwide, and the IEA and its member associations were early adopters of the technology. In 1985, lewiston’s orchard Elementary joined the national Education Association’s “mastery in learning” program, which grew to include 60 schools across the country. In

1989, IBm linked the “mastery in learning” schools via a computer network through which school staff submitted two papers every month to share with network members. By 1991, the Idaho Education project was calling for telecommunications technology in rural schools because “Idahoans expect that students will also need to have working familiarity with the computer, robotics, and telecommunications technologies that are rapidly becoming staples of contemporary life.”

Starting in 1993, the IEA offered training to help teachers improve their access to and use of technology. The IEA college of Educational

1980s, using new tools in the classroom

1935, Advertisement for a “duplicator” for teachers, Idaho Education Association newsletter

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Technology sent a core of trained Association members to present workshops around the state. Soon thereafter, the IEA ran radio ads expressing the need for additional funding to put computers in classrooms because “kids need access to those computers and they’re expensive!” By September 2003, the State Board of Education began to require teachers to demonstrate technological competency for recertification, with the IEA opting to draft a technology standards proposal for teachers.

with ever-increasing demands on school budgets, the IEA has always made tireless efforts to bring cutting-edge technology and training to all of Idaho’s students and teachers.

1995, kindergartners at computers

1980s, Early computer technology was not wireless

1975, mobile lab classroom

2000s, remodeled classroom at lowell Elementary School, Boise

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IEA HEADqUARTERS

when it was founded in 1892, the Idaho State Teachers’ Association met in the representatives’ room in the state capitol. when the legislature came to town, the organization moved its meetings to the Sonna Building on Boise’s main Street. The Teachers’ Association began with fewer than 100 members at the start of the 1900s. membership climbed to 358 by 1912 and numbered in the thousands by the 1920s. In need of professional staff to run the growing organization, IEA’s 3,000 members finally voted to hire an executive secretary (later called executive director) in 1926.

membership reached 4,000 by 1929, and before long IEA leaders needed assistants and secretaries, all of whom required a place to work. Early in 1948, IEA members voted on a proposition to purchase a building to serve as headquarters, and they identified a building on State Street in Boise directly across from the capitol. The leaders sought to raise $20,000 from members for the purchase, and 173 of them met that goal with pledges that exceeded $25,000.

1948 to 1967, original Idaho Education Association headquarters building on State Street before remodel

1948 to 1967, original Idaho Education Association headquarters building on State Street after remodel

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Before a full decade had passed, IEA had almost outgrown the State Street building’s ground floor. They renovated and added to the building in 1959-1960. however, the legislature’s condemnation of eight blocks surrounding the capitol in 1966 — including the building that housed the IEA — forced the Association to move yet again. The state paid the IEA $225,000 for the building and the two associated lots on State Street, and the organization proceeded to purchase and raze four residential buildings at Franklin and 6th Streets to clear land for their new headquarters. In 1967, architectural firm wayland, cline and Smull drew plans for the new building, which today sits in sight of the capitol building where founding members held their first meetings. The IEA moved into its new home in 1968, and former Executive Secretary Elmer crowley proclaimed the building to be a “symbol of our profession… a demonstration of unity without which little can be accomplished.” more than 40 years later, the IEA re-christened the building the “James A. Shackelford Building” in honor of the Executive director who served from 1992-2008.

1968 to present, Idaho Education Association headquarters at the corner of 6th Street and Franklin in Boise

2009, dedication of the newly named James A. Shackelford Building at 6th and Franklin

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1963-1980

CHAPTER 4

oduring this tumultuous period of educational reform that witnessed school boards pitted

against teachers and taxpayers doing battle with revenues and education budgets,

the Idaho Education Association’s members stood steadfast on behalf of educational

improvements for Idaho’s youth. g The IEA accomplished much, despite the tensions

and difficulties of the time. g It was during this era that the legislature finally passed a

statewide sales tax that was intended to bring major funding increases to schools and

teachers’ salaries, reduce property taxes, and draw more skilled workers to the state. g however, soon after passing the sales tax, the legislature diverted the revenues to non-

education issues not intended by the original law. g This forced the IEA and teachers to

encourage counties and school districts to continue levying the maximum amount they

could, despite the Association’s ongoing stance that Idaho’s public schools should be

funded equally by all of its citizens, property owners or not. g during these unstable

years the IEA decided it could no longer eschew political involvement and keep “schools

out of politics.” g A long history of delegate Assembly-produced legislative agendas

eased the transition into politics, and the IEA created its political Action committee

for Education, or pAcE, in 1965. g Teachers often faced harsh criticism when battling

for the rights achieved during this period, but they put their jobs on the line for the

good of the profession and the education of Idaho’s children. g Their sacrifices and

pAcE’s work were rewarded by substantive changes to laws and budgets. g lawmakers

approved professional negotiations as the method for teachers to bargain their contracts

collectively and created public kindergartens to serve young children as part of Idaho’s

education landscape. g The addition of the uniServ structure, jointly funded by the nEA

and IEA, provided local education associations with training and skills from professional

staff located in or close to their communities and dramatically changed the structure of

the IEA itself. By the end of the 1970s, the IEA had truly laid the groundwork for solid

educational opportunities in Idaho and created a respected and vocal profession in the

state. g But the end of this era witnessed a voter backlash against taxes in the form of

the 1% Initiative, a measure that had the potential to greatly reduce public education

budgets yet again, forcing the IEA to defend public education’s gains.

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Convincing lawmakers to consistently increase spending on educating Idaho’s children had been a focus of the IEA since its inception in 1892. The 1963

discovery that Idaho spent an average of $125 per student less than the rest of the nation on its schools led to outrage among Idaho teachers and the Idaho Education Association. The study ranked Idaho 50th in the nation on increased spending over the previous ten years, giving the IEA an “I told you so” moment on which to capitalize.

To determine the best path forward, the IEA lobbied Governor Robert E. Smylie and the legislature for a comprehensive study of public education to bring focus to its problems and give the legislature some direction in anticipation of the 1965 session. However, the governor and the Legislative Council declined to authorize such a study. Seeing an opportunity to make a real difference in a state where political leadership was clearly lacking, the National Education Association stepped in at the request of the IEA and promised to provide results before the legislature convened on January 4. In a showing of solidarity, teachers began to wear safety pins in 1964 to symbolize the “stitching together” of funding, the desire of the IEA to “pin down the facts” about Idaho schools’ true needs, and the determination to demonstrate unity among all educators.

When the study results were released in January 1965, the black and white nature of the findings convinced even the legislature that action was needed. The study found that the general expenditures for the public schools of Idaho were insufficient to provide adequate educational opportunity for Idaho’s children and that there was a great need for improvement

and expansion in curricula, plant facilities, and increased salaries in order to hold onto qualified staff and faculty. Although the study took note of a few outstanding programs, it generally concluded that schools throughout the state were “severely handicapped for lack of adequate building space, instructional equipment, specialized staff, facilities, and teaching materials.” School programs were too heavily weighted toward the college-bound student, and the study urged Idaho to create public kindergartens so that fewer children would have remedial needs later in their school careers. The report also argued that schools needed more specialists and more non-certified support staff and that teachers needed to be better prepared. The report stated that students deserved teachers who all had four years of college under their belts (including those with provisional and lifetime certificates) and argued that providing career incentives such as better salaries, training opportunities, and professional recognition would attract the brightest people to teaching.

With the NEA study findings in hand and Governor Smylie providing additional leadership in favor of additional funding,

monEY, polIT IcS, And EducATIon In IdAho

1967, cartoon in Idaho Education Association newsletter

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the 1965 Idaho Legislature passed a 3% sales tax. The IEA was ecstatic. Its long-standing efforts to reduce the tax burden on property owners and spread the cost of education more evenly among the citizens of the state had resulted in a major victory. One of the expected results of the new funding source was a reduction in local levies across the state, as well as a reduction in student fees. Of the money raised, an appropriation of $57.3 million was slated to

go toward public schools, some of which was for teacher salary increases. The IEA hoped that instructional improvements would also be made, including more textbooks, visual aids, better school maintenance, reduction in class sizes, more school librarians, and a wider variety of vocational subject offerings for all of the districts. The new appropriation inched the state closer to the IEA’s goal of 50% state support.

Spirits soon were dampened, however, when opponents gathered 61,000 Idaho voters’ signatures against the sales tax, qualifying it to be placed on the ballot for a referendum. Voters would either confirm or reject the measure on the November 1966 ballot. The threat to overturn the new funding mechanism sent the IEA into full campaign mode to defend the legislature’s recent decision. First, the group activated its Legislative Action Committee, whose focus would be to recruit education and other school supporters to campaign for the

maintenance of the 1965 sales tax through a “Save Our Schools!” coalition. The IEA had first activated this Committee in 1964-65, and it would now serve as the nerve center for the upcoming election. Even though the Unified Educational Council, of which the IEA was still a part, was supposed to be the legislative planning body for the IEA, its fragile coalition had been undone by the sales tax issue, and the IEA opted to take legislative matters back into its own hands. In anticipation of the 1966 election, the IEA created Truth Squadrons which consisted of educators and other sales tax supporters to make public appearances and help the public become more familiar with the impact of the sales tax on education. It also agreed to employ public relations consultants on an as-needed basis to implement the public information program, which included news releases and other communications efforts. Finally, the organization simultaneously recommended that the UEC be strengthened and the IEA also expand and execute its own political action program.

One of the most significant outcomes of the sales tax issue for the IEA was the organization’s decision to create its own political action committee in the summer of 1966. Having pledged for many years to stay out of politics, the organization finally recognized that politics was a tool that could be used to effect great change for the education of Idaho’s children. With the

1966, political advertisement for cecil Andrus, as it appeared in the Idaho Education News

The IEA commented that “teachers should be politically active because they have an obligation to teach citizenship, and they are poorly equipped indeed if they are not themselves full time citizens.” — Idaho Education News, 1966

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UEC all but obsolete, the IEA created the Political Action Committee for Education, or PACE, and by doing so, acknowledged that education was inherently political and proclaimed that teachers “must end their traditional disdain of politics.” PACE was a bipartisan group led by one Republican and one Democrat co-chairs, and it included teachers and other supporters of the public schools. It operated as an independent organization charged with supporting issues that were in the best interest of Idaho education as well as candidates who supported those issues. PACE was an effort to make teachers highly involved citizen role models, and the IEA commented that “teachers should be politically active because they have an obligation to teach citizenship, and they are poorly equipped indeed if they are not themselves full time citizens.” Testing its new political weight that summer, PACE divided Idaho into six regions and created promotional and campaign literature for Democrat Cecil Andrus for governor and Republican Robert E. Smylie for governor in the August 1966 primaries, because both candidates had publicly championed the sales tax. Unfortunately, the first campaign effort was unsuccessful when Don Samuelson won the Republican nomination and proceeded to defeat Cecil Andrus in the general election. But later growth in membership and experience led to many victories.

Even though the IEA’s “Save Our Schools” campaign was successful in defeating the sales tax referendum in November 1966, tensions rose. Legislators came to the statehouse in January 1967 intent on diverting the new sales tax revenues to unintended uses. Suddenly, the IEA and educators across Idaho found themselves yet again on the defensive and angry. The 1967 session was filled with tension between educators and lawmakers. During the session, state lawmakers voted to divert

sales tax revenue toward tax relief and other issues (such as making Boise College a state-run school). Adding to teachers’ frustrations, legislators failed to pass a law on professional negotiations. Even with all the added revenue from the sales tax, the legislature passed only a meager increase in the public school budget for the ensuing biennium ($2.6 million total), outraging the education community. Four days after the budget vote, teachers in Pocatello and Butte County closed their schools and came to Boise to reason with the legislators. But the House Education Committee Chair told them they were “100 days too late,” and the Idaho Statesman weighed in that the “march was ill-timed and unwarranted.” Many teachers vowed to ask the IEA to impose sanctions on the state in the wake of the session, which the legislators answered with a threat to repeal the teacher retirement program improvements they had just passed. In response to such threats, teachers in Firth and Idaho Falls shuttered the schools for a day in protest.

In the aftermath of the disappointing session, the IEA’s 1967 Delegate Assembly met on the last day of March and voted to place an advisory sanction on the state, pledging to study and then reassess the status of Idaho education over the ensuing months. The

1967, delegate Assembly

54 1967, delegate Assembly

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advisory sanction warned teachers to “weigh job proposals carefully before accepting assignments in Idaho.” Delegates also resolved to submit a request to the NEA to again study education in Idaho so as to determine whether to place formal sanctions on the state, a move that would make it unethical for teachers to accept positions in the state. Such action would also greatly elevate awareness of the lack of state support for public education in Idaho. Reports showing an unusual number of unfilled teaching positions indicated that Idaho was facing a teacher shortage; therefore, implementation of formal sanctions would no doubt pose a hardship for the state. The move outraged many politicians, media, and the public, a small group of whom even burned IEA Executive Secretary Wayne York in effigy in the streets of Boise that year. But the IEA realized that sanctions were an extreme method by which the group could wield its influence in an effort to accomplish a significant educational goal.

The ensuing NEA-sponsored study did in fact find Idaho’s schools to be non-competitive, and the IEA’s Educational Policies Committee voted in August 1967 to place Idaho under a sanction alert, giving the state a year to improve the situation before the organization implemented official sanctions. The alert was to be proclaimed and publicized while a committee or commission developed specific plans for improving educational conditions in the state. If matters did not improve, the IEA promised, a stronger sanction would be applied, at which time it would become unethical for teachers to accept work in Idaho.

Meanwhile, educators around the state were restless and frustrated. Low salary increases offered to teachers in Pocatello resulted in 65 of them quitting. In Idaho Falls, a similar situation caused the teachers’ spokesperson to proclaim that “the teachers

will not sign” their contracts for the following year. And in American Falls, teachers staged a one-day strike over a raise of only five percent (5%). Boise lost 47 teachers during this period as well, and there was another “general exodus of teachers from the state.” Relations between school boards and educators were at an all-time low. Without a professional negotiations law, trustees’ handling of teacher contracts was arbitrary and left teachers in the dark about their job security and salaries. Passage of professional negotiations legislation was top on the list of priorities for the IEA, and the organization planned to closely watch the legislature for progress on this front, in the hopes that official censure sanctions would not be needed.

However, a year passed with no discernible improvements at the state level. In March 1968, the Special Delegate Assembly met and adopted a censure sanction for the State of Idaho. The action was predicated on what the organization believed were disgraceful teacher salaries, the state’s granting of teaching contracts through “letters of authorization” to unqualified teachers, and statements from the state that it would provide only 40% instead of 50% financial support. IEA members imposed censure for Idaho’s failure to meet “its constitutional responsibility to public school education.” The sanctions made it unprofessional and unethical for any person not currently contracted in the state of Idaho to apply for or accept a contract to teach or for existing contracted teachers to move districts after April 1, 1968.

The censure sanction was predicated on what the organization believed were disgraceful teacher salaries, the state’s granting of teaching contracts through “letters of authorization” to unqualified teachers, and statements from the state that it would provide only 40% instead of 50% financial support.

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Reporting on the sanctions in his April newsletter column, Executive Secretary York assured readers that the IEA was not happy about the sanctions, but that professional educators were tired of being “political footballs in the budgeting game.” Because legislators spent money on phasing out business inventory taxes instead of providing additional funding for education, the IEA turned to local districts to stop “the continued rollback of local levies which had accompanied the 1965 tax equalization act.” As one of its reasons for supporting the sales tax, the rollback had been a primary goal of the IEA, which believed strongly that education was a state responsibility, not the responsibility of local property owners. But the lack of state funding increases meant that the IEA was pushing every district to use its full 30-mill levy for 1968-1969, a position that painted the organization in a difficult light, since it had always supported reduced property taxes. The NEA and the IEA were gradually reexamining their position on this, determining whether a “three-legged stool” approach would be best for educational funding: property tax revenue, income tax

revenue, and sales tax revenue. But the two groups had not yet adopted this as a policy, so coming out in favor of higher levies was somewhat questionable. Finally, in the face of the teacher shortage, the state continued to issue Letters of Authorization to people without certificates to serve in the schools. The IEA recommended that its members (all of

whom were certified) refuse to teach in the same building with uncertified employees and that they unofficially refuse to sign the following year’s contracts until a change was made. York also urged all members to join PACE and resolve to be active in at least one political campaign committee.

Upon issuing sanctions, the IEA launched a public relations campaign that had three critical goals: 1) passage of a professional negotiations law; 2) passage of a professional practices law which would support the IEA’s goal of 100% teacher success; and 3) 50% state support for education in Idaho. With pressure from the IEA, the 1969 Legislature finally passed a Professional Practices Act, which created a 14-member Professional Practices Board. The Board (which became the Professional Standards Commission, or PSC, in 1972 and which stands at 18 members in 2012 at the behest of the IEA) helped the IEA advocate for a system that would ensure quality teachers in every Idaho classroom. It was charged with creating standardized and high quality teacher preparation programs, uniform certification standards, and a code of ethics for the profession. As part of its mission, the Commission evaluated each of Idaho’s college and university teacher preparation programs, regularly updated certification standards for every course offered in Idaho’s K-12 public schools, and continually revised Idaho’s Code of Ethics. In addition, the PSC investigated charges of unethical behavior and determined what, if any, action should be taken, including possible revocation of a teacher’s credentials. Almost all of the decisions made by the PSC were subject to review and approval of the State Board of Education. In 2012, only seven of the 18 seats are specified for classroom teachers. However, the chair of PSC has been held by an IEA member since the Commission’s inception. The creation of this Commission was a critical

1967, delegate Assembly

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achievement for the IEA because it represented further professionalization of education and maintenance of high standards.

With this major success, coupled with a large appropriations increase that year, the IEA voted to lift the sanctions in March 1969. Executive Secretary York recommended that qualified professional teachers again “be urged to teach in Idaho.” However, he also insisted on a continued public relations campaign to assist with the intolerable relations with school trustees. He encouraged better relations with them and recommended that teachers attempt to create voluntary negotiation agreements with their local trustees and remain politically engaged.

The IEA committed to several continuing priorities: a professional negotiations bill, district-wide trustee elections, election of the state superintendent on a non-partisan ballot, and a reduction of the majority required for school bond elections. Additionally, the IEA campaigned for a comprehensive system of kindergarten programs throughout Idaho, as well as standards for kindergarten, day care, and nursery schools. Opposition to public kindergartens came from people who believed the program was unnecessary and would in fact impinge on the responsibility of parents to educate their children at an early age as well as those who worried that kindergarten funding would pull financial resources from other already under-funded programs. The election of and subsequent support from Governor Cecil Andrus on this issue was instrumental in the 1970s. He campaigned on the matter for five years, and the IEA joined other education stakeholders, including those from the early childhood education community, to support his efforts. In 1975, public and legislative support was solid enough to pass the bill, with additional support from teachers who were now satisfied that kindergarten creation

would not impact funding for existing programs. The bill that passed provided basic funding for kindergarten programs for school districts that decided to offer them, but it was, and remains today, voluntary. In subsequent years the IEA encouraged lawmakers to strengthen kindergartens by requiring all Idaho districts to offer such programs, but no such amendment was ever enacted. Today such a requirement may be unnecessary, as every Idaho school district offers a kindergarten program. However, many continue to fear that in a severe budget crunch one or more school districts might view these critical programs as expendable.

gIvIng TEAchErS SEcurITY And A voIcE: rETIrEmEnT And proFESSIonAl nEgoTIATIonS

The 1967 legislature took several significant steps toward improving Idaho’s teachers’ retirement system. Since 1957, Idaho teachers had been eligible for both social security and teacher retirement, and the IEA believed that school employees needed both. The NEA’s goal for teachers nationwide was a retirement benefit of 50% of a career teacher’s final salary. Also, with Idaho the last remaining state with no compulsory retirement program for teachers, IEA members wanted a mandatory system so that teachers and the state were both required to participate in pension funding. The IEA suspected that the state had never fully met its financial

The IEA aimed to accomplish the retirement merger during the 1967 legislature, believing that it would be the only chance to include all public employees in one retirement program.

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obligations to the system, and along those lines, Governor Robert E. Smylie had “consistently argued that the good faith and credit of the state were adequate and matching funds were not needed.” Such an attitude created a fiscally unsound system, which the IEA worked to strengthen in the early 1960s.

The IEA’s Professional Rights and Responsibilities Committee decided in 1965 that the best way to ensure security for teachers and attract more qualified educators to the state would be to merge

the Teachers’ Retirement System with the newly created Public Employees’ Retirement System of Idaho (PERSI). A recently completed actuarial study found that in the event of a merger, the assets and liabilities of the teachers’ system could be absorbed by PERSI — a compulsory program — “without adverse effect on the funding of the combined program.” A merger would increase the investment base and decrease administrative costs per employee. The state had been paying the equivalent of a one-mill statewide property tax into the Teachers’ Retirement Reserves from the sales tax revenue, and although the fusion would require a biennial appropriation of $8.5 million from state sources for teachers’ retirement, the state would save $1.8 million from the sales tax, $200,000 from the general fund, and another

$50,000 in administration costs.

The IEA aimed to accomplish the merger during the 1967 Legislature, believing that it would be the only chance to include all public employees in one retirement program. If IEA members did not reach their goal, they worried that richer districts would join the public employees’ system and leave others behind, creating a confusing patchwork of systems for the teaching profession. The IEA accomplished its goal when the Senate passed the merger bill by a vote of 33-2, and Idaho’s teachers finally obtained retirement security.

By the time the new retirement system was activated on July 1, 1967, more than 11,000 teachers had joined PERSI. The old Teachers’ Retirement System was eliminated, and its assets were absorbed into PERSI. However, while teachers who were surveyed the previous year expressed a preference for a secure retirement package over salary increases, they were nonetheless outraged when it became clear that their paychecks would shrink in the wake of the new retirement law because of the legislature’s diversion of sales tax revenues.

Another key issue in the tumultuous 1960s was a professional negotiations law, a formal method of brokering the relationship between trustees and teachers, something for which the IEA had been fighting since the start of the 1960s. Professional negotiations, despite some arguments to the contrary, were not “a revolutionary approach” to contract negotiations, said the IEA. In fact, many districts had been employing the method voluntarily for several years. What was new was the teachers’ insistence that the method be required in every district. Professional negotiations gave teachers a voice and provided them a formal role in the development of educational policies that affected them directly. Through negotiations, they could express their views on contracts as

Teachers picketing, Boise

59

well as important educational policies, such as textbook selections, curricular problems, personnel evaluations, and other issues. The mechanism was intended to provide a pre-determined set of procedures through which issues of mutual concern to trustees and teachers would be debated and decided. A professional negotiations act would stipulate that a representative organization at the local level be empowered to bargain with the local school trustees. It would also provide an orderly process in the event of disagreement or impasse. The absence of such a process had resulted in many adamant actions by teachers in the late 1960s trying to obtain fair workplace conditions. In Firth and Idaho Falls, teachers conducted one-day walk-outs in 1967, and a similar action took place in American Falls in 1968.

Because some trustees questioned their legal ability to negotiate with teachers, the IEA urged state legislation that specifically authorized professional negotiation procedures so those concerns could be put to rest. The IEA also urged all local associations in the state to work toward achieving voluntary professional negotiation agreements until the legislature adopted a law. Finally, the organization implored superintendents — who served as the executive officers of their boards of trustees but who were also members of the education profession — to recognize the leadership role inherent in their jobs and the need to help bring teachers and boards together. To that end, Idaho’s school superintendents met in January 1968 and unanimously supported a resolution favoring a professional negotiations law. But convincing the trustees of the value in professional negotiations was a different matter. While the IEA listed passage of a teacher negotiations bill as its number-one priority in the 1969 Legislature, defeat of that same bill was listed

by the Idaho School Trustees Association as its number-one priority.

The public disagreement between the two organizations led them to begin working together in late 1969 toward a mutually acceptable bill to present to the legislature. Representatives from both groups met in Pocatello in October to discuss what such a bill would look like. They ultimately agreed on: 1) a requirement for school boards to negotiate with professional staffs if a request was made by staff; 2) a listing of the items to be negotiated, including grievance procedures, salary, fringe benefits, textbook selection, conditions of employment, procedures to be followed in development of curricula, and assignment of teachers; 3) an exclusive representation clause; 4) a specification that mediation costs would be equally split between boards and the representative body; and 5) a no-strike clause. There were other points agreed upon, too, but the groups still

1976, cartoon in Idaho Education Association newsletter

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remained at odds over the roles of principals and superintendents. However, upon taking the agreement back to its full organization, the Idaho State Trustees Association balked at some of its provisions. Further discussions ensued, and by the following October (1970), the two groups put the issue to rest, agreeing to allow the exclusion of principals, superintendents, and supervisors from the professional employee group if the negotiation agreement so specified. In 1971, the legislature finally passed professional negotiations legislation, allowing educators the right to address a variety of educational and professional concerns

chAngE In ThE locAl ASSocIATIonS And ThE STrucTurE oF ThE IEA

The passage of professional negotiations legislation moved much of the educational debate to the local level and required much more of local associations than had previously been the case. Continued inadequate funding infuriated educators across the state, and teachers put their jobs on the line in record numbers, holding difficult strikes and engaging in other actions at the local level when trustees

would not live up to their obligations. Despite the passage of professional negotiations in 1971, some districts still could not come to terms on teacher contracts. In the capital city, the Boise Education Association imposed sanctions upon its local board in 1971, and the IEA followed with state sanctions against the board when contract details were disputed. Contracts also were held up that year in Idaho City and in Nampa. Clearly, legislators’ failure to pass an adequate appropriation the year they passed professional negotiations invited assertive action on the part of educators at the local level. The tension only grew when a bomb threat ended deliberations at the IEA’s special Delegate Assembly during the legislative session that year.

The inadequate appropriation of 1971 led the IEA to urge every school district in the state to hold an election to exceed the statutory 30-mill limit in order to make up for the gap in state funding. In response, 31 districts put a levy on the ballot, and 30 of them passed, many by huge majorities. It was an astounding victory for education, but a bittersweet one for the IEA, which had always believed deeply in equalized state support funding instead of unequal property tax funding. The need for three-legged stool approach was all the more apparent, as property tax revenues became entrenched as a permanent source of educational funding.

The IEA believed the people had spoken loudly. Education for Idaho’s children was the citizens’ number-one priority, even if they had to tax themselves to pay for it. The levies, together with professional negotiations and the political action of the teachers, eventually ushered in a brief period during which the elected leaders of the state, including trustees and state representatives, met higher demands for public education. PACE also had a great deal to do with the improved political

1973, marsing negotiations team

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environment. In 1970, the political action committee boasted 28% of all IEA members as PACE members, and with its substantial financial resources, PACE threw its support behind Cecil Andrus in the general election. Andrus genuinely supported education in Idaho, and while his lack of success with legislators was disappointing for educators during his first legislative session, his efforts and their support of him eventually paid off.

Impetus for leadership in the school funding arena came when the legality of state educational funding structures was called into question in 1971. That year, the United States Supreme Court ruled in at least two cases that a disproportionate dependence on property tax revenues to fund public schools violated the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution. The decision threw funding discussions in Idaho and across the country into a tailspin. In addition to the school levies passed following the disappointing legislative session of 1971, the IEA had advocated continued levy increases as the only remaining solution to an insufficient level of state support. Thus, fearful of a similar lawsuit in Idaho and a declaration that the funding system was unconstitutional, the IEA — which had always advocated for a mere 50% level of state support — and many legislators decided to seek 100% funding at the state level. Despite a great deal of public support and a bill that passed the House, 100% state funding did not come to pass until the next century. Instead, the IEA adopted the three-legged stool strategy soon afterward.

Although the first year in office was not Andrus’s most successful on behalf of education, by 1973, the state budget included a healthy $15 million increase for public education, with which the IEA was satisfied. The following year, the increase was another

$12 million, and the legislature also passed improvements to PERSI — including major changes in the cost-of-living adjustments for retired members and more attractive early retirement provisions for active members of the system — without a single dissenting vote in either chamber. An actuarial study provided cost estimates that led the IEA to advocate changes to the provision requiring compulsory retirement at 70 and changes to reduced benefits for members who retired early and without a full 30 years of service. Temporarily, things looked brighter.

While there was a great deal of strife in some districts, most local associations recorded successful negotiations, thanks to the professional negotiations law. Some of the issues successfully negotiated in early years after the law’s passage included payment for unused sick leave, added insurance benefits, and better personal leave policies. Court action by the Parent Teacher Association also led the legislature to return $15 million to the endowment fund in 1974.

1976, Strike in Twin Falls

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In spite of salary increases approaching 10%, the 1970s was an era of runaway inflation, and teachers’ salaries did not keep pace. In addition to cost-of-living increases, classroom expenses also spiked, with paper prices, for instance, going up 50-100%. The IEA’s local associations became increasingly active, insisting trustees do all they could to raise adequate revenues at the local level. Strikes and dissatisfaction continued, and in 1975, strikes in Nampa and Bonner County school districts almost prevented the opening of schools that fall. In Nampa, officials could not agree on cost-of-living increases, and teachers voted to strike and withhold pre-school preparation services. In Bonner County, teachers voted to strike just before the 1975-1976 school year to force negotiations after the school board refused to negotiate matters brought to the table by teachers. Six additional school districts began the school year without contract agreements in place: Pocatello, Idaho Falls, East Bonneville, Jefferson County, Soda Springs, and Oneida County. Three of those districts — Idaho Falls, Pocatello and Oneida County — also staged strikes that fall. Since the negotiations law passed in 1971, there have been 18 strikes, with teachers putting their jobs on the line for the betterment of education.

unISErv: EmpowErIng, orgAnIzIng, And rEprESEnTIng mEmBErS

During this period of major strife in the early 1970s, the IEA forged improved ties with the National Education Association, incorporating the NEA’s system of regional organizers that forever changed the direction and impact

of the Association. Called UniServ, short for United Service, the idea was to employ highly-trained, professional staff, called UniServ or Region Directors, and to locate them in areas of the state where they would be quickly available to local Association leaders and members. The first such staff person in the nation was assigned to work with the Boise Education Association in the summer of 1970 as it moved forward to settle on a grievance procedure. By the end of the year, another Region Director was hired to serve southeastern Idaho, and the IEA eventually created a statewide system of Region Directors with offices located in Coeur d’Alene, Lewiston, Twin Falls, Pocatello, Idaho Falls, and Boise. These positions were funded primarily from the IEA’s budget, but significant financial help came from the NEA.

The job of UniServ staff was three fold. First, they were to organize members to help them accomplish the goals they set for themselves and their profession. Second, they offered ongoing training in areas such as leadership development, grievance representation, negotiations, membership recruitment, and public relations. Third, they acted as on-site representatives for members facing employment-related challenges.

UniServ’s impact on Idaho educators was impressive and significant. The program’s most valuable contribution was the transformation it facilitated within the IEA. Prior to the institution of this model, the Association’s actions focused on the work at IEA headquarters — lobbying, public relations, and legal actions. But UniServ took the face and the expertise of the Association into every community in the state. The new structure allowed local Association leaders and members to be trained in organizing

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passage of the sales tax and the corresponding rise in many districts’ property taxes caused citizens to rally around proposals to limit tax increases. with sponsorship from the Idaho property owners Association, the 1% Initiative gained enough signatures to qualify for the ballot in november 1978.

members to achieve goals unique to their own school districts, whether to improve salaries, benefits, and working conditions, to engage community members in supporting passage of override and bond levies, or to give voice to the array of educators’ ideas for improving teaching and learning.

During UniServ’s 40 years, members have come to recognize their Region Directors as one of the most valuable benefits offered by their Association. UniServ staff has proven to be a group of knowledgeable, creative, energetic, and passionate partners who care about the issues local Association members and leaders confront, and they offer immediate, professional assistance in changing the status quo. Organizing members to effect change in their own lives is the core goal of UniServ, and for four decades, those organizing efforts have been instrumental in bringing about change in the political arena, at the bargaining table, and in the classroom.

ThE FIrST 1% InITIATIvE

The Supreme Court decisions regarding equal funding, combined with the 1970-1972 controversies over funding, provoked a backlash against property taxes nationwide.

Idaho was in the thick of it, and it took organizations like the IEA to lead the charge to preserve school funding through the end of the decade.

Passage of the sales tax in 1965 and the corresponding rise in many districts’ property taxes caused citizens to rally around proposals to limit tax increases. With sponsorship from the Idaho Property Owners Association, the 1% Initiative gained enough signatures to qualify for the ballot in November 1978. The measure was intended to limit property taxes to 1% of actual market value and limit assessed value to only 2% growth per year. Its passage would result in a reduction of local government revenues by an estimated $141 million. The IEA urged its members to vote against the measure because of the adverse impact it would have on the public school system. The Idaho Secretary of State’s office prepared a brochure urging Idaho voters to vote against the measure for many reasons, including the drastic impacts on schools. Idaho then ranked 50th

among the states in average per student expenditure and 39th for teacher salaries. The revenue decline would exacerbate that situation, since Idaho public schools received 41.3% of their revenues from the property tax.

The IEA conducted a vigorous statewide campaign against the 1% Initiative, but in spite of these best efforts the measure passed, as did similar ballot measures in other states, including California. Thus, when the

Idaho Legislature came to town in 1979, it was completely focused on only one issue: implementation of the 1% Initiative. Thanks to the lobbying of the IEA, Governor John Evans proposed shifting $24.4 million from

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the general fund to education and reducing the property tax by 9 mills. While such a move would increase the state’s share of public school funding, it would only increase the education budget by about 7.6% instead of the 10.5% requested by the State Board of Education. In the end, the legislature passed a budget that gave education a 5.6% boost over the previous year, a move deemed reasonable by the IEA, considering the session’s potential for serious cuts. With the IEA’s encouragement and leadership, the legislature slowly dismantled the major provisions of the 1% Initiative, rescuing schools and other public services from much more drastic reductions.

concluSIon

This era ended with the successes of the previous 20 years being overshadowed by the new challenges of the 1% Initiative. The IEA ensured that Idaho’s teachers had solid retirement

packages and reasonable salaries during an era of steep inflation, and fought for every dollar to keep class sizes down and supplies in stock. From the sales tax fight to the budget in every biennial and, starting in 1969, annual legislative sessions, the IEA was there as the voice for Idaho education and won many of those battles. Additionally, following a protracted fight in which the IEA imposed sanctions on Idaho, the state created the Professional Standards Commission which allowed the profession to police itself, and passed the professional negotiations act. Finally, the IEA and others convinced the state to pass a bill and fund public kindergartens. In spite of these tangible and important victories, the IEA and educators across Idaho were about to face the toughest challenges since the dawn of public education, as the 1980s approached and the concept of free enterprise competition was introduced into the public education system of Idaho.

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Idaho’s collective bargaining law was passed in 1971. Since then, hundreds of contracts have been negotiated. In only 18 instances has a strike been involved in the bargaining process. with the exception of the strike in parma, all strike settlements included a provision to revise the school calendar so that no student contact days were lost.

IDAHO TEACHERS’ STRIKES

Nampa aug. 28 – 29, 1975 2 teacher days

Bonner County

aug. 29, 1975 1 teacher day

Idaho Falls sept. 26 – oct. 6, 1975 7 student days

Pocatello oct. 7 – 22, 1975 11 student days, including 2 inservice days

Oneida County

oct. 15 – 24, 1975 7 student days (oct. 17 would have beendismissed for opening day of deer season)

Blackfoot aug. 25, 1976 1 teacher day

Twin Falls sept. 17 – 22, 1976 4 student days

Butte County aug. 31 – sept. 12, 1978 6 student days

Post Falls aug. 28, 1980 1 teacher day

Council oct. 28, 1980 1 student day

Jerome april 22, 1981 1 student day

Wilder sept. 9, 1981 1 student day

Twin Falls oct. 19 – 24, 1984 3 student days

Middleton feb. 28 – march 4, 1986 3 student days

Moscow aug. 24 – sept. 3, 1987 2 teacher days, plus 7 student days

Mountain Home

may 13 – 26, 1988 6 student days

Nampa sept. 17 – 20, 1991 4 student days

Parma sept. 19, 1991 1 student day, but school was open with substitutes, so no make-up day scheduled

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As the 1980s dawned, Idaho was mired in a national recession. Tensions, as usual, were high in Idaho’s educational community. The IEA declared February

1, 1980 to be Legislative Action Day. In response, approximately 5,000 people (including 4,000 teachers) marched a mile in the snow from Boise’s Julia Davis Park to the capitol to demand a 13.2% increase

in state funding for the annual education budget. Many districts closed their schools for the day, and 78 of Idaho’s 115 school districts were represented at the rally. The crowd walked 10 to 12 abreast, stretching all the way from the park to the capitol. Governor John Evans joined the education supporters for the last two blocks and promised them they had his support. He urged the huge crowd to “Do what you do

1980-2012

CHAPTER 5

owith a professional negotiations law and the uniServ structure in place, the role of

local associations was greatly elevated after the 1970s. g The empowerment of the

local affiliates required the state organization both to build and support a structure

designed to help locals be successful and to address larger trends in education at

the state level. g This was a time of challenging and difficult changes in national

and state educational policy. g Among those challenges was making sure that local

and state-level salary schedules remained competitive with surrounding states and

that teachers were provided the professional support and training they needed,

becoming more strategic about political endorsements, and putting a structure in

place to support children and their communities beyond the schoolhouse. g All

of this effort came at the same time national political forces were introducing the

idea of competition into education, putting the existing public educational system

on the defensive. g The idea of school reform, however, was something the IEA

had long called for, and by the turn of the 21st century the IEA was advocating for

numerous programs to meet the new century’s challenges. g The IEA recognized

and rewarded schools for excellent performance and innovation and campaigned

for a penny sales tax increase to implement the visionary changes members had

in mind. g But at the beginning of the new century’s second decade, the IEA also

had to defend the public schools and their employees from cuts and attacks on fair

employment practices.

crEATIng A FAIr workplAcE

1990s, Apple pin

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best - teach. Educate [the legislators] about the problems you face.” IEA President Willie Sullivan was cheered by rallying teachers when he said, “We are here to say that we are Idahoans, we love Idaho and we want to continue to teach Idaho’s children. We do not want to be driven to other employment or to other states by finances!” The rally was successful in many ways, including opening new lines of communications between teachers and legislators, as evidenced by the lunches, phone calls, and letters that were subsequently exchanged. Moreover, the legislature increased education funding in the amount requested.

However, it seemed that no matter how far teachers came, they still somehow lagged behind. Salaries did grow for a short time, from an average of $20,969 in 1984-1985 to $23,931 by 1989, thanks to efforts by the IEA and pressure resulting from events like the 1980 rally. Such enhancements were paid for in part by the boost in sales tax that lawmakers passed in 1983, raising it from 3% to 4% and in 1986 to 5%. Nevertheless, Idaho salaries fell increasingly behind the national average. Idaho’s average teacher salaries in 1985 were $4,344 behind the national rate of $23,931, and by 1989, that difference had grown to $7,277. It took until 2004 — 20 years — before the legislature established the minimum teacher salary at $27,500, a last-ditch effort to remove Idaho from a list of the five states with the worst salaries for educators. Teachers’ salaries were among the lowest recorded for citizens with a bachelor’s degree. To address this ongoing problem, which everyone seemed to acknowledge, politicians outside the profession designed policies such as merit pay and career ladders. But what lay at the heart of the problem was not a lack of competition, but the teachers’ very simple desire to receive professional salaries that “reflect[ed] the worth of the

education profession to the rest of society.”

Again, teachers turned to professional improvement in an effort to increase their value to the students they served and to the state. And, as usual, the IEA was at the forefront, offering a number of recommendations. First, IEA members urged college teaching programs to raise their admission and graduation standards. Second, they recommended the creation of an autonomous Professional Standards Commission (PSC), one not under the control of the State Board of Education, so teachers could better police themselves. By now, there were 17 seats on the Commission, but only seven were reserved for classroom teachers. The IEA believed that the number should be higher. Additionally, the decisions of the PSC were mostly subject to State Board review and approval. The IEA advocated better administrative preparation programs and a

1980, governor John Evans joins IEA members in their march to the statehouse

1990, caldwell teachers picket

1980s, Idaho Teachers care button

681980, rally

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shortened teaching day to allow time for more meaningful professional growth. The IEA tried to help new teachers, who worked under non-renewable contracts for their first three years, to succeed and be treated fairly. Those whose contracts ultimately were not renewed had no right to due process and were afforded few protections against unfair dismissal. IEA members believed that a focus on professional growth could help in each of these areas.

During the 1990s, the IEA began publicizing data proving the anecdotal evidence regarding retention of new teachers. More than 20% of new public school teachers nationwide left teaching within three years, and more shockingly, 9.3% left within the first year. In 1999, IEA President Robin Nettinga expressed her particular concern with teacher retention in Idaho, pointing to the 1,519 vacancies that year and the lack of qualified teachers to fill them. Only about 20% of those spots were filled from other Idaho districts, which left 80% “to be filled from other sources.” In the opinion of the IEA, teachers in their early careers needed more support than anyone else, and the IEA was determined to see it was provided.

Protections for the newest teachers was one of the IEA’s most significant goals primarily because the Association believed every employee deserved fair treatment in the workplace, including schools. The IEA felt that a quality mentoring program would help. Statistics showed that first-year teachers stayed on the job in greater numbers when they had a mentor, with only 7% leaving within three years. The statistics were proven out in Idaho where, following two years of a new IEA mentoring program in the mid-1990s, retention rates of young teachers improved by 10%. In 2001, the IEA successfully convinced the legislature to codify these programs by passing a law that provided mentoring as well

as other services to non-renewable contract teachers, and gave them similar workplace rights to renewable contract teachers. The legislation required school districts to conduct at least one teacher evaluation each year and design a system to encourage professional growth. New teachers would receive mentoring, peer assistance and professional development, administrative support, and, if unsuccessful, a written statement explaining the reasons of non-rehire. Districts would also be required to give third-year teachers a probationary period prior to non-rehire. The IEA believed this new system would create a more collaborative, less contentious environment, thus building a collegial school atmosphere that would ultimately serve the students better.

The State Board of Education had a different approach to the problem of too many vacancies, which involved certifying new teachers. The Board explored and eventually enacted an alternative certification program for citizens who did not have an education background but who had subject expertise that might be useful in a classroom. This new program required a bachelor’s degree with a 2.5 minimum grade point average (GPA) and academic credits comparable with current major or minor requirements for secondary

1989, IEA officials meet with governor cecil Andrus

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endorsements. But it did not require any training in pedagogy or time spent in classrooms learning how to work with students. The IEA strongly objected to the new plan, but the State Board adopted it nonetheless.

polIT IcS And compETITIon In EducATIon

By the turn of the 21st century, the IEA had already led Idaho through a series of reforms brought on by the political culture of the 1980s. Ronald Reagan’s presidency ushered in an era of competition for the public schools. From the early 1980s well into the new century, the public schools and the IEA faced major challenges as competition and criticism arose from all corners. The impetus for change came when U.S. Secretary of Education T.H. Bell released a report from the National Commission on Excellence in Education in April 1983. Bell had asked a group of prominent Americans to assess the quality of education in the United States.

Called “A Nation at Risk,” the report stunned almost everyone. Educators and the political establishment were shaken by the language used in the Commission’s findings. The report’s opening words summarized its overall sentiments:

“…the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people. What was unimaginable a generation ago has begun to occur — others are matching and surpassing our educational attainments. If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves. We have even squandered the gains in student achievement made in the wake of the Sputnik challenge. Moreover, we have dismantled essential support systems which helped make those gains possible. We have, in effect, been

1994, governor cecil Andrus signs retirement improvements law

71

committing an act of unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament.”

Thirty years later, many in the education community believe this report marked the beginning of the “education reform” debate, a debate that brought scores of proposed changes to the system of providing tuition-free, universal education to America’s children, a debate that even today continues with fury and passion.

In the wake of the report, the vision for equal education for every child in Idaho became harder to achieve as competition grew. Merit pay schemes, which divided rather than united teachers, incentives to compete for federal dollars based on students’ test scores, and efforts to divide precious

public money among private, independent, and charter schools were rapidly growing, with encouragement from the state. The IEA was a vocal and articulate critic of these ideas but sought to shape these concepts for the benefit of students and teachers as some of these new programs were gradually adopted in whole or in part. The organization also provided leadership for Idaho’s traditional public schools, helping them to reach deeper into the community through various programs that extended the teachers’ roles outside of the schoolhouse.

1987-1988, Average state teacher salary graph 1987-1988, Average state per pupil expenses graph

1990s, head of the class logo

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As a result of the Nation at Risk report and simultaneous events in Idaho, IEA President Terry Haggardt proclaimed in 1983 that, “We are under attack!” He continued: “I wish I could tell you differently but this attack is stark reality….Republican Chairman Dennis Olson has told the IEA ‘to pack its bags.’ Conservative Representative Mack Neibaur has said it is ‘time to get the IEA out.’” Haggardt was referring to the many policies that the IEA had heard would be considered

by the upcoming 1984 Legislature. First, lawmakers were analyzing a bill that would provide $20 million for salary equity, an effort to impose certain salary levels and career ladders at the state level but outside of the negotiations process. The IEA did not oppose the concept of career ladders per se. In fact, the IEA developed its own career ladder plan. What the organization opposed was the effort to take control away from local teachers. A similar idea, merit pay, was opposed by the IEA from the start. The organization wanted to foster cooperation and collaboration among teachers, not competition. Limited pooled funds for merit pay would make competition intense, with great potential for inequality and unfair application among teachers. In stating his opposition to merit pay, Governor John Evans noted that “teachers are part of the solution, not the problem,” and argued that merit pay would be inappropriate until

1986, rally on statehouse steps

“we are under attack!… I wish I could tell you differently but this attack is stark reality….republican chairman dennis olson has told the IEA ‘to pack its bags.’ conservative representative mack neibaur has said it is ‘time to get the IEA out.”— IEA president Terry haggardt, 1983

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the average salary of Idaho teachers became competitive with the region’s average. That same legislative session, a bill was introduced that would provide tax credits to families who sent their children to private schools, creating another group with which to compete for funding. With the IEA’s help, lawmakers defeated the bill, but it wouldn’t be the last time Idaho’s lawmakers entertained the concept.

By the close of the1980s, the IEA found itself spending a disproportionate amount of time defeating similar proposals. There were suggestions for discretionary grants to teachers, more merit pay proposals, open enrollment so that parents could choose which district to send their children, bills that would

restrict teacher negotiations, and studies of the continuing contract law with an eye toward ending it. As the state moved into the next decade, at least three proposals were presented to the legislature that would subsidize private schools, either through vouchers or tax credits. Merit pay received the same attention in multiple legislative sessions, and, until 2011, all were defeated with the help of the IEA, which felt strongly that the proposals were either unwise or unconstitutional, not to mention poor educational policy for students and teachers.

Between 1980 and 2000, PACE took close notice of these legislative debates and threw its weight behind candidates it knew would support public education funding and genuine reform goals. In 1980, 42 of the 69 PACE-endorsed candidates (or 61%) won in the November elections. That number rose in 1986, when 81% of candidates endorsed by PACE in the primary carried their races. In the general election of 1988, the IEA claimed 78% victory, and in 1992’s primary campaign, 87% victory. Voter education was critical to the effort, and the organization published mocked up voting cards in the newsletter to show members who was most likely to support a pro-education agenda. But the IEA faced the difficult reality that, in many races, there were no candidates who shared the IEA’s vision for Idaho’s schools.

2008, voting card

1999, read Across America logo

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volunTArY conTrIBuTIonS AcT

One of the tools that fueled PACE’s success was the monthly payroll deductions that teachers gave in support of the political action committee. The deduction system provided the vast majority of PACE’s revenues, even though the organization also raised funds in other ways. IEA members provided such strong support that, by the early 1990s, PACE’s budget topped

$200,000 per two-year election cycle.

PACE’s influence on the political process threatened many sitting legislators who eventually fought back. In the spring of 2002, the IEA sponsored a huge rally on the statehouse steps protesting Governor Dirk Kempthorne’s recommended budget cuts. That fall, voters elected a significant number of IEA-backed candidates, mostly

Democrats, to the legislature. Nonetheless, it was still shocking when legislative leaders took aim at PACE early in the 2003 session by attacking the heart of its funding

mechanism. Masking their real agenda, the legislature passed a bill called the “Voluntary Contributions Act” (VCA), which made it illegal for public employees to contribute to political action committees through payroll deductions. While the new law applied to all public employees, it was clearly intended to squelch the voice of Idaho’s teachers, whose political action committee had built one of the most sizeable treasuries for candidate campaigns.

Upon passage of the VCA, the IEA immediately filed suit against the state, alleging the new law violated teachers’ free speech. The argument was simple: eliminating payroll deductions for political contributions was a clear attempt to stifle the influence of teachers and other educators who wished to participate in a unified fashion in the political process. The case was first heard in the United States District Court for the District of Idaho, with Judge Lynn Winmill presiding. The IEA was represented by attorneys from the NEA and IEA General Counsel John Rumel. Shortly after the hearing, Judge Winmill ruled in favor of the IEA’s position, but the state appealed Judge Winmill’s decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. After hearing the case, judges on this panel also unanimously supported the IEA’s position, declaring the VCA unconstitutional.

However, the state appealed to the United States Supreme Court and, in an unexpected move, the Court agreed to consider it. A

1999, Idaho students join in nEA’s read Across America project

one of the tools that fueled pAcE’s success was the monthly payroll deductions that teachers gave in support of the political action committee.

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hearing before the full U.S. Supreme Court was held on November 3, 2008, and three months later the Court issued its decision. Not surprisingly, given its make-up at the time, the U.S. Supreme Court reversed the ruling of the Ninth Circuit and upheld the constitutionality of the Idaho law.

In spite of this decision, most IEA members still believed their free speech rights had been minimized by enactment of the VCA. To cope with the change, the IEA put in place alternative systems for educators to contribute to PACE and to maintain its viability in Idaho’s political campaigns.

IEA And communITY work

A 1982 Gallup Poll had shown a communication gap between schools and the general public, and the IEA wanted to help its members bridge that gap. As it increased its efforts to assure quality public education for all students through its political support, the IEA also began to reach further into the communities its members served. The organization encouraged work that ranged from assisting individual children to supporting curricula that recognized human and civil rights to helping local associations create summer programs for children in rural areas.

Issues that impacted students’ lives outside of the classroom became a big concern for the IEA and began to occupy more of the organization’s time and resources. Leaders recognized there was only so much teachers could do in their limited time with their students in the classroom, and, as it did from early in its history, the IEA felt that teachers and educators had a responsibility

to do more in their communities to support education of children.

As such, the Association developed a set of recommendations to be implemented across the state, including better school lunch programs, adherence to safety codes, full-time nurses, greater teacher participation in civic organizations, creation of parent-teacher advisory councils, greater support for anti-child abuse laws, and better health and nutrition services for students. In 1985, the IEA’s Delegate Assembly voted to assess members $3 per year for three years to fund a special public relations project that would assist with achieving these goals. The campaign focused on issues outside the schools that impacted student progress. The money funded pamphlets on issues such as child abuse, discipline, parent-teacher conferences, suicide prevention, and other related topics. The organization even offered workshops to its members on topics such as “Detecting and Responding to Child Abuse.”

The organization also made it a point to champion civil rights issues and made major impacts on especially needy children. For example, in 1993, the organization supported a Meridian nurse who discussed AIDS with her sixth-grade students following the announcement that basketball player Magic Johnson had contracted the disease. In 1994, the IEA took a stand and opposed Proposition 1, which would have censored school libraries and curricula, restricted teachers and counselors in their discussions with students, limited the rights of gays and lesbians, and resulted in discrimination. The Association set up an Inclusion Task Force to assist with the integration of special needs children into regular classrooms, with training sessions for

1990s, kids count button

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teachers. The IEA continued to serve its role as the liaison between the teaching community and the legislators on these matters, as well. Finally, the IEA created summer reading lists for students from kindergarten to 12th grade, which local associations distributed in “parent packs” that included recommendations for summer activities and parental tips on a variety of topics. Local associations also spread the word about free lunches being offered to students over the summer.

ThE IEA chIldrEn’S Fund

Moving kids to the head of the class, a motto for the IEA, meant helping them come to school more prepared. A significant part of

the vision for public education in Idaho was the IEA’s creation of the Children’s Fund in 1996. As part of the Association’s effort to reach further into communities around the state, the Fund was founded to help meet the needs of Idaho’s children and continue educators’ impact on the local people they served. While most teachers would say they went into the education field because they wanted to help children, many discovered early in their careers that children often had difficulty concentrating in school because of hunger, inadequate clothing, or neglectful family situations. The IEA Children’s Fund was founded to help address these needs. The growth of the fund over its first ten years was nothing short of remarkable. In 1997, the Children’s Fund made its first approved donation to a family in need, and IEA President Monica Beaudoin appointed a task force to grow the fund. By November of that year, $7,000 had been raised and donated to 28 students and their families around the state, including one family who faced the utility company trying to shut off their heat during the cold fall. The IEA Children’s Fund became a nonprofit charitable organization and was legally incorporated in its inaugural year, and by the next year the donations grew to $26,000. By the turn of the 21st century, the Fund had raised more than $200,000, provided $150,000 in 731 grants, and had put away $20,000 in an endowment fund. The annual Delegate Assembly gatherings began to include a silent auction to raise money for the Fund, and in 2001 alone, delegates raised $37,000. Just twelve years after its inception, the Fund topped the $1 million mark. It is managed by a six-person board of directors composed of IEA members and provides assistance to some of Idaho’s most needy children. The Fund remains one of the IEA’s proudest accomplishments.

Educator’s oath, distributed during an nEA representative Assembly

IEA children’s Fund logo

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EducATIon SupporT proFESSIonAlS

The IEA did not limit its community involvement to children, however. The organization aimed to provide the same workplace rights afforded to teachers to education support professionals (ESP) such as school bus drivers, custodians, classroom aides, and school secretaries. In 1989, at the IEA’s behest, the legislature passed a law providing ESP employees several basic employment rights, such as written evaluations, written hiring procedures and job descriptions, and grievance procedures. In an effort to continue improving employee rights for this group, the IEA introduced legislation in 1992 to provide collective bargaining rights for educational support professionals. At the time of the proposed legislation, 9,500 public school employees in Idaho worked at will, meaning they could be fired at any time. They also had no voice in determining their salaries or benefits. Although the IEA was unable to obtain professional negotiations and other rights for these valuable employees, the IEA

nevertheless counted more than 1,000 grateful ESP members among its ranks, for whom the organization offered lower membership dues to account for their lower salaries. Battling for fair treatment in the workplace for this group of employees is another example of the IEA standing tall for basic human rights.

IdAho EducATIon In ThE 21ST cEnTurY

Having made major strides in community outreach in the 1980s and 1990s, educators approaching the turn of the century began to consider what students in the new era would need to achieve. A state-appointed Education Reform Committee had conceived some illogical reforms and created a state reform initiative. In response, the IEA created its own Visions of Change in the mid-1990s, a set of ten statements that offered a vision for what the public schools should look like, based on the everyday experiences of public school teachers. This visionary book was based on thousands of conversations with teachers all over the state who knew what it would take to reform public education for the 21st century. It included ideas for involving parents, creating multi-age classrooms, and other innovative ideas.

The events of 2001 changed education forever. Although changes to accountability and testing in the 1990s and up to 2001 were a preview of things to come, the spring 2001 passage of the federal law commonly known as No Child Left Behind (NCLB) altered education to a magnitude that no one expected. As noted above, teacher accountability had been debated since the early 1990s, and the State of Idaho had created a Goals and Testing Commission to identify and intervene with chronically

1990s, Idaho bus driver with student

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challenged schools, imposing financial consequences for lack of achievement. In addition to state action, the idea of student accountability through standardized testing also was becoming ingrained in the public’s mind. NCLB, however, seemed to stress that the only measure of a student’s success and a teacher’s worth was based on tests that did not take into account parental involvement or a child’s background. The new federal legislation took these concepts to a different level, as NCLB mandated targeted annual achievement gains determined by standardized testing mechanisms. Schools failing to achieve those levels were threatened with losing their federal funding. A major problem for teachers was the effort by some districts to use students’ test scores as the primary, and sometimes sole, method to evaluate teacher performance and therefore justify

their termination or pay levels, with no consideration for the impact of other factors in those children’s lives.

When the tragedy of 9/11 befell the nation that fall, many Americans felt it put priorities and life back into proper perspective. However, for a brief time, fear gripped the country, and people as well as state governments felt unsure of their economic security. Suddenly, the IEA was dealing not only with accountability questions but with funding concerns again. In October 2001 Idaho Governor Dirk Kempthorne proposed a series of budget holdbacks for all state agencies, including a reduction of $23 million (or 2.5%) in that year’s previously approved budget for the public schools. Kempthorne’s proposal represented the first ever reduction in Idaho school funding, and this one came in

2010, physical education teacher and students

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the middle of the school year. Idaho educators were furious, and the passion of the 1970s was reignited.

In less than a month during the 2002 legislative session, the IEA collected 23,000 signatures of Idahoans who demanded restored and increased funding for public schools, produced CDs thanking legislators who had supported public schools, and organized four rallies that attracted a total of 8,200 public education supporters, including parents, teachers, administrators, ESPs, and school board members statewide. Pointing to a November 2001 poll that showed widespread public support for increased school funding, IEA President Kathy Phelan reminded lawmakers, “Idaho citizens hold public schools and teachers in high regard. They said public education funding is a serious problem in this state.” Phelan opined:

“From the beginning, it was clear that [in the wake of the emergency] legislators were not asking the right questions. They should have asked ‘What do we need to do for Idaho’s children and how can we do that?’ Instead, they seemed to be asking ‘How do we divide the money that’s available?’ Those two questions represent two completely different

approaches to the problem.”

On February 20, Phelan and her fellow teachers delivered the petitions to the statehouse, and she told the crowd that “Idaho’s public school children are not just one more ‘line item’ to be cut… A third grader struggling to read can’t wait until our economy revives.” State Superintendent Dr. Marilyn Howard joined Phelan on the statehouse steps, together with the executive director of the Idaho Association of School Administrators and the president of the Idaho State Parent and Teachers Association. At another rally later that month 5,000 supporters of education rallied and marched to the capitol asking legislators to reject Governor Kempthorne’s recommendation and to maintain the $933 million budgeted for the 2002-2003 school year, with one Idaho PTA state board member asking, “How can we teach our children to value education when they see how much our government undervalues it?” Those gathered included former Governor Cecil Andrus

2002, rally in lewiston

“From the beginning, it was clear that [in the wake of the emergency] legislators were not asking the right questions. They should have asked ‘what do we need to do for Idaho’s children and how can we do that?’ Instead, they seemed to be asking ‘how do we divide the money that’s available?’ Those two questions represent two completely different approaches to the problem.” —IEA president kathy phelan, 2002

2002 rally, Idaho Education president kathy phelan

802002, rally for school funding

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and State Superintendent Jerry Evans, who both spoke on behalf of Idaho’s children. In spite of this public outcry, the legislature cut the budget for schools.

In addition to these holdbacks, the state had a renewed focus on teacher accountability. Although it supported accountability, the IEA approached the concept differently than the state’s political leaders. Not surprisingly, the organization understood students’ success as a factor of more than just their teachers. The Association viewed success to result from a collaborative effort of all of the people in a child’s life. Instead of bonuses for individual teachers/principals, tiered diplomas and monetary (or other) rewards for students, and state-defined performance levels for administrators and educators, all of which were part of the state’s plan but which created competitive atmospheres in the public schools, the IEA proposed the Mutual Obligation and Accountability Plan in 2002. The IEA plan was designed to hold eight groups accountable for student achievement, including students, teachers, administrators, schools/buildings, districts, parents, community, and policymakers. To be successful, the IEA plan would create “turnaround teams” of educators “experienced in raising student achievement,” provide for incentives to attract highly qualified teachers, and treat and reward students as part of a community rather than as individuals. The IEA asked that the state improve pay levels for all school employees and invest in better books, materials, and technology for schools. Finally, IEA members called for “a recognition that all stakeholders will have to work together as a team.”

Under NCLB, there were serious consequences for schools that fell short of national goals. For instance, schools failing for four years would be required to develop a new curriculum, and schools suffering

five consecutive years of failure would be subject to “a state takeover, management by a contracted company, or conversion to a charter school.” As time went on and the implications of NCLB became clear, the IEA was concerned that the federal law would prove inflexible and impose unjust

2002, rally for funding

2007, Idaho Study guide news conference

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consequences upon local schools without regard for the time needed to align local and state support in order to meet national goals. Their four main concerns were timeline, resources, flexibility, and consequences.

The IEA had always supported professional improvements and hoped that continued professional growth would help schools achieve their targets. The IEA supported a

new program of tiered licensure as a means of quality control. Under this program, “license” would replace “certificate,” and “certification” would replace “endorsement” in terminology. Idaho already boasted many teachers who had achieved National Board Certification — 272 as of 2001 — which was at the time the 12th highest number of teachers in the nation. The IEA continued to support improved

professional training, especially classes and training on weekends and other times when teachers could actually attend.

Along with accountability and testing, the trend of competition was explored in a new way beginning in 2004, when the state first considered legislation to allow charter schools. From the start, the IEA felt that charter schools should be public schools and should be structured so as to pose no negative impact on traditional public schooling. And while they also thought that

charter school teachers should be certified, IEA members believed that charter programs should be “qualitatively different from what is available in mainstream public schools.” The IEA also felt that home, private, and for-profit schools should not be eligible to receive charters and that charter schools should be nonsectarian in nature. The IEA supported charter school legislation and hoped to cooperate with state policymakers in the shared goal of educating Idaho’s children. Legislation permitting charter schools did in fact pass, and more than 30 have been established. In November 2010, the IEA admitted the first charter school education associations to join and affiliate with the IEA. However, the IEA continues to point out the drain on funding that approval of an increasing number of charter schools has had on all schools.

A pEnnY For SchoolS

Of course, the funding issue never went away. By 2005, the IEA had fended off two additional efforts in 1992 and 1996 to freeze property taxes, and Idaho’s sales tax, which had stood at 6%, had been reduced to 5%, effective on July 1, 2005. IEA members and leaders were extraordinarily frustrated over the continued unwillingness of Idaho’s political leaders to provide adequate funding

2006, proposition 1 signature gathering. Boise State university student member Amber mcvey collected more than 1,000 signatures for the campaign, more than anyone else.

2006, proposition 1 signature gathering

“This initiative will help supply classrooms with up-to-date materials and supplies for students and protect or reduce class sizes. It will also ensure that Idaho can attract and retain quality teachers and staff in local classrooms.” —IEA president Sherri wood, 2005

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for public schools. When the economy was good and tax revenues were plentiful, politicians were prone to provide tax relief rather than invest in public services, including schools. When times were tough, talks turned to budget cuts. IEA members had done just about everything they could think of to press their case. Years of talking to and writing their legislators and doing their best to elect more pro-public education candidates had done little to make a dent in the regular national rankings – almost dead last – in per pupil expenditures, teacher pay, and class sizes.

Voters and policymakers were disconnected, IEA members said. Year after year, poll after poll identified Idaho voters’ top public policy priority was adequate funding for K-12 schools, yet legislators continued to underfund schools. Frustrated IEA members began calling for a new strategy, and in 2005 the IEA acted.

At a specially-called Delegate Assembly in October, delegates voted almost unanimously to direct the IEA to prepare a voter initiative that would compel the legislature to dramatically increase funding for public schools. In the next two months members drafted the initiative, and on December 5, 2005, IEA President Sherri Wood filed it with the secretary of state. Wood said, “This initiative will help supply classrooms with up-to-date materials and supplies for students and protect or reduce class sizes. It will also ensure that Idaho can attract and retain quality teachers and staff in local classrooms.” The initiative identified a penny increase in the sales tax as the primary source for additional school funding, although it also specified that the legislature could create alternative revenue enhancements if it so chose. All this made sense in the spring of 2006, since the legislature had, in line with its traditional

philosophy, just reduced the sales tax from 6% to 5% as Idaho’s economy gained steam.

Following a review by the secretary of state and the attorney general, IEA members and other education supporters took to the task of gathering the necessary signatures of registered Idaho voters to place the measure on the November ballot. The target was huge — 48,000 — and the timeline short — only 89 days. But in one of the most remarkable demonstrations of passion and organization ever seen, IEA members and friends collected over 80,000 signatures and delivered them to the Idaho Secretary of State’s office ten days before the deadline. The initiative effort was verified by the state and identified as Proposition 1.

During the summer and early fall, thousands of IEA members gave up evenings, weekends, and holidays to campaign for passage of Proposition 1, or the Idaho Local Public Schools Investment Act. Educators and others called their neighbors to explain “Prop 1” and to encourage their “yes” votes. Television commercials were supplemented by billboards and yard signs, and volunteers distributed pamphlets door-to-door. During the campaign for the initiative, heartbreaking stories from teachers revealed how desperately the students needed change: “I have 116 students —27-30 in each class. I have only 24 textbooks.” Or this, from another teacher: “I work two jobs, plus coach, in order

2006, proposition 1 campaign logo

2008, Average teacher salaries in western states

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to scrape by. When I’m not working, I’m continuing my education. So, in reality, I work three jobs to make ends meet. My wife and kids qualify for state insurance assistance because I can’t afford the premiums for the school district insurance.” It was a first-rate political effort and the IEA’s internal polling showed a majority of voters willing to support the initiative at the ballot box.

Then disaster struck. On August 25, Governor Jim Risch called a one-day special session of the Idaho Legislature. He asked legislators to restore the sales tax to 6% and to dedicate the revenue from that extra penny solely to reducing property taxes. The skids had been greased and Governor Risch’s proposal flew through both the House

and Senate in only a few hours. The IEA’s campaign to capture that available revenue for schools was dashed, and the ensuing three months were spent trying to convince voters that the legislature could find other ways to adequately fund schools.

But the damage had been done, and on November 7, voters defeated Proposition 1.

IEA members and leaders were frustrated, angry, and disappointed. But, because their cause was just and the needs of schools still unmet, they resolved to move forward. In subsequent years the IEA built on the lessons of this valiant effort and continued to advocate for adequate funding for every Idaho student.

ThrEE YEArS oF cuTS To EducATIon, 2009-2011

Things on the funding front did not improve, however. In 2008, the United States economy collapsed, and unemployment skyrocketed in almost every state, including Idaho. Sales and property tax revenues plummeted, and, with the legislature’s decision in 2006 to assume almost 100% of funding for schools, school districts saw trouble ahead. Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter signaled the severity of the situation early in the new fiscal year when he ordered holdbacks for all areas of government, including schools.

At the beginning of the 2009 legislative session, the message was already clear: prepare for cuts. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna suggested what he admitted were “10 bad ideas” for slicing the budget. The IEA spent the entire 117-day session – the second longest in state history – urging lawmakers to consider all other options before cutting school funding. Despite the IEA’s best efforts, lawmakers ultimately cut $69 million from public schools. An infusion of federal stimulus dollars, coupled with

In three years, funding for Idaho public schools had been cut by close to a quarter of a billion dollars, and fair workplace gains made by educators over a fifty year period were whittled away.

IEA members lobby legislators

2009, Teacher and student

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numerous rainy day accounts, could have reduced the cuts. In fact, more than $130 million specifically earmarked for public education still sat in the state coffers at the end of the session, with lawmakers doing nothing to restore the education budget.

In January 2010, Idaho’s economy remained sluggish and federal stimulus funds were dwindling. When the session ended, lawmakers had cut $128.5 million in school funding for the next year. This historic action represented the first time in Idaho’s history that schools would receive less total funding than the previous year. To provide greater spending flexibility to school districts, legislators temporarily eliminated or reduced both statutory and non-statutory requirements for spending. This move allowed districts greater latitude to use their resources, but districts still faced a nearly 15% reduction in discretionary funding. Fortunately, IEA and NEA members helped convince the U.S. Congress to pass the Education Jobs Fund bill, and Idaho received $51.6 million in federal funds to keep many educators on the job.

When the 2011 session started amid a slowly improving economy, educators were bracing for still more budget cuts. However, recently re-elected State Superintendent Luna went beyond mere budget cuts and blindsided

the public with a package of reforms that would significantly impact the public school budget and operations for years to come. After months of battling over the reform package, which included modifications to the teacher contract law, overhaul of teacher pay, and technology mandates, legislators approved an additional $47 million in cuts to public schools for the coming year. In three years, funding for Idaho public schools had been cut by close to a quarter of a billion dollars, and fair workplace gains made by educators over a 50-year period were whittled away.

hISTorIc AlTErATIon oF School lAwS hEAdEd For rEFErEndum

In Luna’s fall 2010 re-election campaign, he boasted that Idaho’s schools were among the nation’s best. Yet a mere two months later, he introduced a radical overhaul of education measures that he had not promoted on the campaign trail, saying Idaho needed to “educate more students at a higher level with limited resources.” Luna’s surprise plan grabbed headlines the first day of the 2011 legislative session and continued to be debated right up to its final day.

This historic alteration of Idaho public education included three bills. The first effectively rolled back the collective bargaining rights of Idaho teachers, ended renewable contracts for teachers, and allowed trustees to reduce salaries and change teacher working conditions without negotiations or due process. It also eliminated the fact-finding process in professional negotiations, allowed school districts to fire teachers without legitimate reasons or a fair hearing, and removed funding safeguards for school districts experiencing unexpected enrollment declines.

2011, rally against new laws

2011, rally against luna laws

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2011, petitions for the 2012 referendum on the three luna laws delivered to the secretary of state

The second bill established a complicated and vague teacher pay-for-performance system based primarily on student test scores. This measure required local school districts to spend

$89 million on bonuses in its first two years without providing a source of state funding. In testimony, IEA President Sherri Wood called it “a cruel joke on teachers.”

As if these were not bad enough, the third bill was the most controversial. Originally, Luna called for high school students to take eight online credits to graduate (this was later scaled back to two) and for each 9th grader to receive a school-issued laptop. In order to pay for his plans, the superintendent convinced lawmakers that the state would need to reduce state funding to local school districts by $156 million over the next six years through allocations that otherwise would have been spent on teacher salaries. Educators, parents, and students mightily protested the “Luna laws” throughout the session, with students leaving school to protest on the steps of the capitol. Reporters, meanwhile, detailed Luna’s extensive and suspicious ties to the for-profit online education industry that would clearly benefit from the passage of this bill.

Even before the end of the session, the IEA began preparing to take the three measures to the voters through the referendum process, a method successfully used only four times in Idaho history. By challenging all three of the superintendent’s new laws, the IEA and its allies would be attempting something never

accomplished in the history of our state: collecting more than 47,000 signatures on each of the three measures in 60 days or less. With the help of more than 4,000 educators, parents, and concerned citizens, the necessary signatures were collected in just 40 days — 20 days before the deadline. On June 6, 2011, 112 volunteer parents, students, and educators delivered 125 boxes of petitions containing more than 220,000 signatures to the secretary of state, paving the way for the voters to weigh in on these controversial measures on November 6, 2012.

concluSIon

Schools are different today than they were in 1980, primarily due to the state reform efforts and the changes foisted on education and educators. Competition in every facet of education has changed the profession of teaching, not to mention the content of education. As the IEA ended the first decade of the 21st century, educational leaders were forced to reinvent themselves again, defending their worth from a new and more virulent set of attacks that revolved around faceless technology. The organization that had represented teachers for so long, and had championed the introduction of technology in the schools throughout the previous century, found itself at the mercy of laws that would, in part, replace those teachers with computers that had no personal connection or relationship with their students.

However, the IEA has a long history of strength through adversity, and this latest battle is no exception to the rule. The IEA will spend 2012 working with the Idaho voters to make sure that the laws that rolled back so much progress are stricken from the books in November 2012. Through those efforts, the Association will make new friends, gain new partners, and continue its fight for Idaho’s children.

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TEACHER COMPENSATION: iSTARS VS. weTEACH

In the fall of 2007, the IEA and newly elected State Superintendent Tom luna proposed two starkly contrasting plans to an interim legislative committee charged with studying teacher pay. The IEA christened its plan “weTEAch,” while luna called his plan “iSTArS.” Although both proposals planned to build on the single salary schedule, only the IEA’s proposal continued to add funding for it in future years. luna’s plan also attempted to entice teachers with the potential for higher pay, but to reach these levels, teachers would have to forfeit their due process rights. other substantial differences existed between the plans as well, and the debate over luna’s plan brought Idaho’s teachers to the capitol in droves to talk with legislators during the 2008 session. committee hearings were packed with hundreds of teachers from throughout the state who took time away from their classrooms to testify about their concerns. In the end, iSTArS was defeated on the floor of the Senate by a vote of 16-19. however, the IEA recognized that the issue of teacher pay was by no means settled, and it prepared for more such battles in the future.

weTEACH (IEA)

• Career Foundation Pay – teachers would continue to be paid according to education and experience, via their local school district salary schedules, with annual increases determined at the local level.

• Knowledge and Skill-Based Pay – three levels of differentiated compensation would be traversed during a teacher’s career (novice, professional, and master), with increased pay at each level.

• Group-Based Performance Awards – groups of educators could receive additional compensation based on the achievement of goals for improving student success, increasing parental involvement, increasing graduation rates, or other benchmarks approved by their local school districts.

iSTARS (Luna)

• Foundation Pay – a continuation of the current salary schedule system.

• Student Achievement – based on increases in student scores on the state’s standardized test.

• Local Control – additional pay for teaching in a “market scarcity” position.

Additional levels could be attained only if teachers forfeited their due process employment rights:

• Career Opportunity – available to teachers who accepted multiple year contracts but served with no due process guarantees.

• Expertise – for teachers with multiple certifications but with no due process guarantees.

• Leadership – for a limited segment of teachers who accepted roles as mentors or worked on curriculum committees but with no due process guarantees.

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BARBARA MORGAN

Teachers are patient but persistent people. Idaho’s Barbara morgan models those qualities. In 1985, nASA created the Teacher in Space program, and more than 11,000 teachers from across the country applied. Two IEA members, david marquart of Boise and Barbara morgan of mccall, made nASA’s list of ten finalists, but christa mcAuliffe ultimately was chosen to become the first Teacher in Space. nASA chose morgan to be mcAuliffe’s back-up, and they trained together for the ill-fated challenger space shuttle mission.

In the aftermath of the challenger tragedy, morgan agreed to nASA’s request to keep the program alive. For several years, she split her time between teaching elementary school students in mccall and representing nASA at events around the nation. Still, she longed for a space flight of her own.

Educator-astronaut Barbara morgan

1986 challenger crew

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In 1998, nASA decided that teachers could apply to become full-fledged astronauts and announced morgan would, indeed, become the first educator-astronaut. She left her mccall classroom and moved to houston, Texas, for intensive training as a mission specialist. The columbia shuttle tragedy in 2003 prompted another review of the space program and, once again, morgan’s dream was put on hold.

morgan’s patience and persistence paid off in 2007 when she flew a mission on the shuttle Endeavor. Teachers everywhere, especially in Idaho, cheered and wept as one of their own took education to another dimension and showed students, in word and deed, that they can reach for the stars.

In 2008, both the IEA and nEA bestowed their highest honor — the Friend of Education Award — on Barbara morgan.

Endeavor crew. photo: nASA

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THE CONTINUED PROFESSIONAL IMPROVEMENT OF IDAHO TEACHERS

1892 The idaho state Teachers’ association (which would later become the iea) recommended higher standards in the granting of teaching certificates.

1907 speakers at the annual association meeting called for an end to the exclusion law barring teachers certified in other states from coming to idaho, as idaho could not yet produce sufficient teachers on its own.

1926 The association’s committee on certification standards and professional progress called for an increase in requirements for teachers seeking elementary school certificates. surrounding states’ higher requirements were driving under-qualified teachers to seek work in idaho.

1927 at the iea’s insistence, minimum certification standards were adopted in idaho for elementary school teachers, including at least one year of training at a normal school and two years by 1929.

1930 elementary teachers were required to have two years of professional training as well as a high school diploma. high school teachers would now need a college degree to teach.

1933 applicants with teaching credentials from out of state were expected to meet all idaho certification requirements and to attend one term (or a summer session) of training for elementary certification.

1936 new certification standards required elementary-teaching applicants to have nine quarter hours of elementary practice teaching. high school certificates (grades 7-12) required a college degree, with 15 semester hours of education-specific training.

during its 120 years, the Idaho Education Association has continually encouraged Idaho to enact higher standards of teacher certification. This timeline represents the milestone changes in certification standards since 1892. Today, the IEA continues to encourage professional growth for Idaho’s educators and even provides many such opportunities through the Idaho Education Academy. Educators can take classes on classroom behavior management, authentic assessment, teaching creativity, or any number of other topics relevant to the schools. The IEA believes that continued professional growth will benefit both teachers as well as their students.

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1947 at the iea’s behest, the 1947 legislature decided that only the state Board of education could issue teaching certificates. additionally, teachers were required to have two years of accredited college training to receive a certificate to teach in idaho.

1948 idaho teachers were required either to keep their regular certification continuously valid or to meet new certification requirements established by the state Board of education.

1949 new certification requirements called for high school librarians to hold a librarian’s certificate. The new requirements also called for high schools to have no fewer than five full-time teachers.

1955 Teachers were required to have at least four years of accredited college training to receive a certificate to teach in idaho.

1964 all iea members were required to hold bachelor’s degrees

1968 The iea recommended that certified teachers refuse to teach in the same building with uncertified employees, as idaho had continued to issue letters of authorization allowing people to serve in the schools without certificates.

1970 The newly created professional standards Board adopted a code of ethics for the teaching profession in idaho.

1972 The professional practices commission and the professional standards Board merged as an advisory group to the state Board of education.

1998 The idaho legislature passed the idaho comprehensive literacy act, requiring teachers to take special reading courses.

2003 The state Board of education required teachers to demonstrate technological competency for recertification.

2008 The idaho legislature passed the math initiative, requiring all teachers of math to take a math course with the goal of improving students’ mathematical thinking.

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Since its inception in 1892, the Idaho Education Association has believed that public education should be a public goal, and all efforts to improve it should be for

all children, not just a few. It is clear that the public schools have been capable of great change and innovation. From buildings to certification requirements to use and deployment of cutting edge technology, the IEA pushed innovation at every opportunity. The sticking point has always been money. Change and innovation often require money — money for tools, money for training, and money for facilities. Funding in the State of Idaho was something for which only a select few elected leaders were willing to fight.

Over the course of its 120 years, some of the IEA’s battles never were resolved. For instance, in 2012 the state superintended of public instruction is still elected on a political ballot, a process that puts children’s education at the whim of the political winds of the day. Also, maintenance for and construction of school buildings remain financed through bond measures that require a 2/3 super majority for passage, something the IEA tried to steer the state away from for decades. And, of course, salaries remain extremely low compared to other professions.

At the same time, some of the things that the IEA fought for and stood for remain in place today, policies that helped educate some of our state’s brightest minds. The Association has always advocated for high ethics and morals for teachers, as well as promotion of good citizenship. The activism of the Idaho Education Association is an excellent model for citizenship, since the foundation of the United States is built upon free speech and needs active and educated citizens for the nation to continue to thrive and progress. The IEA has also worked to improve the credentials of teachers, and over the last 120 years, Idaho’s teachers have become significantly more qualified. Along those same lines, the IEA worked hard to help teachers achieve professional growth and created mentor programs as well as online courses for teachers who want to continue their professional development.

The 2012 Idaho Legislature offered a fitting tribute to demonstrate the respect earned by the IEA and its members during the first 120 years of the Association’s existence. The legislature, with votes by both the full House of Representatives and the Senate, adopted a resolution in March 2012 (HCR 48) which congratulated the Association on its birthday as well as its advocacy for public school students and educators. The resolution reads in full:

ConClusIono

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WHEREAS, the Idaho Education Association (IEA) was founded 120 years ago, on March 3, 1892; and

WHEREAS, the IEA has long been the principal organization championing universal, tuition-free, quality public education for Idaho’s children; and

WHEREAS, the Idaho Education Association consistently works for high student and teacher standards and innovation in the classroom; and

WHEREAS, the IEA has been the foremost voice for adequate, stable and equitable funding for Idaho’s public schools; and

WHEREAS, educators are often the first to notice when a child needs help and members of the Idaho Education Association have given nearly a million dollars in assistance to their neediest students through their donations to the IEA Children’s Fund.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED by the members of the Second Regular Session of the Sixty-first Idaho Legislature, the House of Representatives and the Senate concurring therein, that members of the Idaho Education Association be congratulated on their organization’s 120th anniversary and their service to the teaching profession and to the children of Idaho.

The Idaho Education Association has provided a service to educators and students throughout Idaho that cannot be adequately expressed in words, whether in legislative resolution or in a book of this nature. The legacy of the organization lives on in the thousands of students who have learned from its members, the thousands of educators whose personal and professional lives have been improved, and those who have yet to enter the schoolhouse door. The IEA thrives in 2012 as it continues its mission of serving Idaho’s children.

BE IT rESolvEd BY ThE lEgISlATurE oF ThE STATE oF IdAho:

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IeA PresIdents: ChAnges In terms of offICe refleCt stronger leAdershIP role

APPENDIx A

Most of the 98 educators who have been elected President of the Idaho Education Association since its creation in 1892 did double duty — serving as full-time teachers or administrators and IEA President at the same time. In 1971, the IEA set aside enough money to allow the president to take a leave of absence from her/his teaching position in order to serve full time in the IEA’s headquarters. At that time, IEA’s top official actually ran for president-elect, served in that capacity for a year, and then filled the role of president for one year. In 1985, the IEA Constitution was amended. Under the new rules, the president-elect position was eliminated, a vice presidential office was added, candidates campaigned directly for the presidency or vice presidency, and the term of office was extended to two years. Beginning in 1989, IEA presidents and vice presidents were allowed to run for a second term of two years, meaning they could serve a total of four years. In 2005, the constitution was again changed to expand the term of office to three years, re-electable one time. IEA President Sherri Wood was the first person to serve for six consecutive years in this important educational leadership position.

1892 Judge J.E. Harroun, Boise

1893 Franklin B. Gault, Moscow

1894 J.W. Faris, Pocatello

1895 J.C. Muerman, Moscow

1896 H.H. Barton, Idaho Falls

1897 F.A. Swanger, Albion

1898 Mary Galloway, Lewiston

1899 Mrs. S.B. Hawes, Boise

1900 M.I. Church, Caldwell

1901 Walter F. Siders, Pocatello

1902 C.W. Vance, Wallace

1903 Miles F. Reed, Moscow

1904 Arthur B. Sears, Idaho Falls

1905 G.H. Black, Lewiston

1906 J.E. Williamson, Boise

1907 George F. Axline, Albion

1908 Ivan B. Warner, Mountain Home

1909 James A. McLean, Moscow

1910 C.E. Rose, Boise

1911 Benjamin F. Crandall, Idaho Falls

1912 Charles S. Meek, Boise

1913 Philip F. Soulen, Moscow

1914 O.M. Elliott, Twin Falls

1915 V. Medlo Hillis, Nampa

1916 Melvin A. Brannon, Moscow

1917 J.E. Turner, Payette

1918 O.O. Young, Boise

1919 J.J. Rae, Burley

1920 Frank W. Simmonds, Lewiston

1921 Charles R. Frazier, Pocatello

1922 Caroline W. Flood, Bonners Ferry

1923 R.H. Snyder, Idaho Falls

1924 C.D. Brock, Wallace

1925 C.F. Dienst, Boise

1926 Ernest D. Bloom, Twin Falls

1927 Ira Tweedy, Rupert

1928 D.A. Stephenson, Nampa

1929 C.L. Harlan, Lewiston

1930 J.W. Condie, Preston

1931 L.C. Robinson, Sandpoint

1932 Karl G. Maeser, Shelley

1933 W.B. Smith, Twin Falls

1934 W.B. Smith, Twin Falls

1935 I.N. Madsen, Lewiston

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1936 George Denman, Burley

1937 Glenn W. Todd, Lewiston

1938 John E. Walsh, Nampa

1939 Alice E. Cosgrove, Pocatello

1940 Elmer E. Wilson, Mullan

1941 W.W. Christensen, Idaho Falls

1942 R.A. Pomeroy, Boise

1943 A.W. Morgan, Twin Falls

1944 L.L. Carlson, Lewiston

1945 Howard Andrews, Emmett

1946 Howard Andrews, Kellogg

1947 Gerald Wallace, Boise

1948 Don Dafoe, Twin Falls

1949 George N. Green, Pocatello

1950 Bess Bays, Boise

1951 Elmer S. Crowley, Idaho Falls

1952 Don E. Fridley, Orofino

1953 Genevieve Dartt, Boise

1954 Melvin Gruwell, St. Anthony

1955 Irene Smith, Idaho Falls

1956 Paul Kaus, Moscow

1957 Ruth Chandler, Aberdeen

1958 Ezra Moore, Burley

1959 Wayne L. York, Lewiston

1960 R. Laverne Marcum, Moreland

1961 Elmer Bittleston, Nampa

1962 Jack Jones, Sandpoint

1963 Sara Kugler, American Falls

1964 Onan Mecham, Sugar City

1965 Dr. L.E. Wesche, Nampa

1966 Robert Day, Carey

1967 Robert Day, Carey

1968 Roger Young, Coeur d’Alene

1969 Lewis Gourley, Idaho Falls

1970 Louise Jones, New Meadows

1971 Ronald Finn, Twin Falls

1972 Walter Chariton, Coeur d’Alene

1973 Howard Beymer, Nampa

1974 Darrell Moss, Sugar City

1975 Dorothy Hansen, Boise

1976 Howard Beymer, Nampa

1977 Terry Gilbert, Nampa

1978 Eldon Janzen, St. Maries

1979 Willie Sullivan, Caldwell

1980 LaMar Hagar, Blackfoot

1981 Linda Dewey, Pocatello

1982 Daryl Sallaz, Boise

1983 Terry Haggardt, Pocatello

1984 Connie Hutchison, Twin Falls

1985 Joyce Raasch, Meridian

1986 Joyce Raasch, Meridian

1987 Peggy Park, East Bonneville

1988 Peggy Park, East Bonneville

1989 Richard Chilcote, Twin Falls




1993 Monica Beaudoin, Sandpoint




1997 Robin Nettinga, Nampa




2001 Kathy Phelan, McCall




2005 Sherri Wood, Caldwell






2011 Penni Cyr, Moscow

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IeA exeCutIve dIreCtors

APPENDIx B

The IEA’s eight executive directors have steered the organization through almost a century of educational change. Each has provided immense leadership for educators across Idaho. When Donald Rollie was hired in 1976, the position title was changed from Executive Secretary to Executive Director.

1926-1946 John I. Hillman

1946-1960 John M. Booth

1960-1965 Elmer S. Crowley

1965-1976 Wayne L. York

1976-1986 Donald L. Rollie

1986-1992 Charles N. Lentz

1992-2008 James A. Shackelford

2008-Present Robin L. Nettinga

2002, Idaho Education Association Executive directors James A. Shackelford, charles n. lentz, and donald l. rollie

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ABouT ThE AuThor

Jennifer Stevens is a professional historian in Boise, Idaho. Her firm, SHRA (Stevens Historical Research Associates), brings history to the public and makes it relevant to modern life. She attended Boise’s public schools between 1982 and 1989 and graduated from Boise High School. She later received her Ph.D. in 2008 at the University of California, Davis, where she specialized in environmental, urban, and women’s history. She lives in Boise, Idaho with her husband John and their two children. When she’s not writing history, you can find her running, hiking, canoeing, or skiing in Idaho’s wilderness. www.shraboise.com

http://www.shraboise.com

1991, Idaho school nurse and students

Early Idaho home Economics class

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2006, we Support pocatello’s Teachers advertisement

1992, 1% victory pin

1991, Idaho teacher and students

Early Idaho teachers and students

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2002, rally on capitol steps100

1992, Idaho school counselor and students


2001, we’ll remember button

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Educator-astronaut Barbara morgan

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1939, Idaho trade class in printing

1996, Idaho teacher and students in school library 1992, IEA centennial pin

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2002, rally at the capitol

1992, IEA centennial pin

1902, lost river teachers and students

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1992, IEA centennial pin

2002, Former gov. cecil Andrus at IEA rally105


1967, Idaho nature study class

2009, IEA-pAcE pin

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2010, IEA Board of directors

march 1992, IEA centennial cake

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2002, rally at the Statehouse

1990, Idaho students

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2010, read Across America poster

2006, gathering signatures for proposition 1

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1987, women’s history month poster

Idaho capitol reflected in Joe r. williams Building110

1949, American Education week poster

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1991, Idaho student

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Vo

ices o

f co

ura

ge, c

ha

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ns o

f excellen

ce



The Idaho Education Association was founded on March 3, 1892, and quickly established itself as the leading advocacy organization for public education in Idaho. During its 120 years of championing universal, tuition-free, quality public education for Idaho’s children, the Association has made great strides. It has lobbied for high student and teacher standards, embraced innovation in the classroom, won fair workplace rights for educators, and been the foremost voice for adequate and equitable state

funding. Voices of Courage, Champions of Excellence tells the story of the brave educators who, on behalf of their students and their profession, confronted powerful policymakers, partnered with parents and other education supporters, and spoke loudly at the capitol and in the voting booth so Idaho’s children could have the best chance possible to become productive, educated citizens with a stake in our state’s and our country’s success.

The Idaho Education Association’s:

– MIssIon sTATEMEnT (adopted in 1995) The Idaho Education Association advocates the professional and personal well-being of its members and the vision of excellence in public education, the foundation of the future.

– Focus sTATEMEnT (2000) To help local associations build capacity to achieve excellence in public education.

– corE VAluEs (2004) Public Education: Preserving the foundation of our democracy.

Justice: upholding fair and equitable treatment for all. Unity: standing together for our common cause. Integrity: stating what we believe and living up to it.

$10.00

Jennifer A. Stevens

First school in Mountain Home.