The National Education Association’s latest report indicates that Idaho’s per student spending is the nation’s worst. Unfortunately, our persistent underfunding of education makes it hard to find quality educators and provide adequate opportunities for students. Nonetheless, the fact that we shortchange education is common knowledge. Yet, despite exhaustive legislative efforts by Democrats, Idaho’s GOP majority resists efforts to raise school funding. Consequently, Reclaim Idaho (RI) is coming to the rescue with a voter led initiative called the Quality Education Act (QAE).

In 2017, RI led a successful initiative campaign for Medicaid Expansion. Now, RI has been gathering signatures to put funding education on the ballot. As a result of their efforts, they collected over 100,000 signatures from all over Idaho. These signatures have received county level verification. Now, RI has submitted them to the Idaho Secretary of State’s (SOS) office for final review. If the SOS accepts the collected signatures, the QAE will qualify as a ballot initiative in the fall. The initiative proposes raising taxes on corporations and high-income earners to raise $323 million for K-12 education.

This Friday, at noon online, RI co-founder Luke Mayville joins us. He will discuss the benefits promised by the Quality Education Act.

ABOUT OUR MEETINGS

The Democrat Club meets each Friday at noon online. Consequently, we distribute a Zoom link for our club meetings each Thursday prior to the meeting date. Contact Phil at pjwmia@aol.com or Ruben at rmiranda2265@gmail.com, to request the link or assistance connecting. We will return to in person/online meetings as soon as it becomes safe to do so. You can find videos of past Club meetings at KootenaiCountyDemClub.com/Meeting Videos.