Adam Cotterell

Getting more Idahoans to go on to college is the top education goal for the state. But sometimes state agencies disagree about how to realize that. Take a report issued last year by Idaho’s Office of Performance Evaluations. OPE evaluates state agencies and programs.

Teacher contract negotiations in the Nampa School District appear stalled.  The teacher’s union Thursday night pushed for raises and no furlough days. The district had proposed 14 furlough days next year. 

Nampa has been fighting through a budget crisis all year. It’s eliminated jobs, closed one school and made numerous other cuts.  But district officials say they still need to cut $3.5 million from next year’s budget.  

A Boise software company Wednesday will announce a cash infusion from investors totaling $2.5 million. Silverback Learning Solutions hasn’t been doing business two years yet, but CEO Jim Lewis says its sales total more than a million dollars and it has 20 full time employees. It also has one unusual partner that gets 8 percent of profits; the Blaine County School District. Lewis retired from his job as Blaine County’s superintendent to form the company.

If you live in southern Idaho you likely won't see the catastrophic fires the area experienced last year.

State and federal agencies came together to give predictions Tuesday on what the state's wildfire outlook this summer could be like. 

Ed Delgado manages predictive services at the National Interagency Fire Center.  He says there’s a big difference between fires expected in the mountains and those in the desert this year.

Republican Tim Corder served two terms in Idaho’s state Senate. During that time, the farmer and truck driver became a hero to pre-kindergarten advocates and earned the ire of some of his colleagues. Corder's legislative career ended last year when he lost his primary race to a more conservative opponent. I met him last summer as he was packing up his senate office. Here is an excerpt of our conversation.

Q: How would you characterize your support for early childhood education during your time in the legislature?

Idaho is one of just 10 states that don’t have a state-supported preschool program. As we’ve examined the reasons for that this week, we’ve heard from some pre-k opponents. Here we go deeper into their arguments.

President Obama’s proposal to expand early childhood education could bring nearly $20 million to Idaho the first year. The president has been talking about increasing access to pre-kindergarten education for months and has proposed raising tobacco taxes to pay for it.

Idaho is one of just 10 states that do not have state-wide pre-kindergarten. But some school districts are finding ways to provide early childhood education. In Caldwell, public and private partners are trying a novel strategy that supporters hope will transform children’s futures.

Forty U.S. states offer pre-kindergarten programs.  Idaho is not one of them.  Here, about one third of 3 and 4-year-olds attend a public or private preschool.  But none attend one that’s funded or sanctioned by the state. However, that doesn't stop some school districts from offering pre-k programs of their own.

Idaho is one of just 10 states that don’t have state-wide pre-kindergarten education. This week our education reporter Adam Cotterell brings us a series on pre-k in Idaho. Adam joined Morning Edition host Scott Graf to preview this week’s reports.

Transcript:

Scott Graf: You’ll be talking about the pre-k debate in Idaho. Are others talking about this issue?   

Idaho is one of 10 states that doesn't offer public preschool to children. Over the next few days we'll examine why the Gem State doesn't have free pre-k, what impact that's having on kids, and the current discussion around early childhood education in Idaho.

But first, here's a map that shows the 10 states without public preschool. The states shaded in coral don't offer preschool. One thing we noticed, they're mostly concentrated in the West. Use the zoom and arrow tools to move around the map and explore.

Untenable, harmful, devastating; three adjectives Nampa Education Association president Mandy Simpson uses in response to the school district's contract offer. That offer includes 14 furlough days.

Nampa teachers’ union representatives sat down this morning to negotiate with a district hired attorney. They were expecting to talk about furlough days and other ways to climb out of the district's budget hole.  The district took the offensive with a contract offer that includes 14 furlough days in the 2013 /2014 school year. The offer does not allow raises that would have come from increased experience.

Friday morning at 7:00 representatives from Nampa’s teachers’ union and the school district will sit down to negotiate next year’s labor agreement. These negotiations may be the last chance the district has to overcome a budget crisis that has dogged it all year.  

The Idaho Shakespeare Festival opens its 2013 season this weekend. The organization “Americans for the Arts” estimates the festival put about $3.3 million into Idaho’s economy last year. More than 58,000 people spent an evening under the stars at the festival’s amphitheater in Boise last summer. Managers expect more than 60,000 this year.

What had been a sweeping lawsuit against Idaho over the constitutionality of its support for public schools is now much smaller.

A judge has ruled that retired educator Russell Joki and a group of parents cannot sue every school district in the state over charging fees for things like science classes or school registration.

District judge Richard Greenwood says Joki can only sue the Meridian School District where he paid his grandchildren's fees.  Joki says charging fees for classes violates Idaho’s constitutional requirement for free and uniform education.

Each May the U.S. Department of Agriculture gives grants to elementary schools to provide healthy snacks. This year 113 Idaho schools received the awards. The program teaches kids at low income schools about nutrition and introduces them to unfamiliar foods.

Most Idaho schools are days away from summer vacation. Boise, Meridian and Kuna school districts will end the year this Friday.

May 31st is the most common last day this year. Nampa students finish a day earlier and Caldwell schools are already finished. 

Other districts like Blaine County and McCall-Donnelly continue classes through the first week of June. Twin Falls will go home halfway through next week.

The Boy Scouts of America voted Thursday to lift its ban on gay scouts. It left in place its ban on scout leaders who are gay. But in the Boy Scout’s Western Region a majority of councils recommended not changing either policy.