Idaho’s Task Force for Improving Education wraps up a series of public meetings Thursday in Boise. The task force’s final public listening meeting will start at 6:30 p.m. at the state capital.
It has been traveling Idaho for two weeks. The group’s goal is to put together recommendations for overhauling the state’s education system that can find broad support.
Task force members expressed disappointment with turnout at their early public meetings. Participation has increased at recent events. But still, it’s hard to predict if anything the public says at these meetings will influence public policy.
“Often it doesn’t,” says James Weatherby, Boise State political science professor emeritus.
He says such listening sessions are common in Idaho politics but they don’t necessarily lead to actual listening.
Public turnout was low at some task force meetings, but so was task force turnout. At some meetings about a quarter of the 31 members showed up but in Twin Falls and Pocatello there were only two. Task force chair Richard Westerberg says he expects each member to come to at least one meeting. The public can also submit ideas online. A spokesperson for the State Board of Education says the task force has received more than 100 e-mail submissions.
“Often policy makers, from their perspective or their ideology, pretty much have decided what they’re going to do,” he says. “Some of them are just looking for ammunition, for ideas and opinions and anecdotes that support their own preconceived notions.”
But Weatherby says the meetings are important because they legitimize the process, and process, he says, matters.
This task force exists because Idaho voters repealed a group of education laws last November. One of the top reasons for that was a public impression that the laws had been created and passed without transparency.
“By opening this up, going around the state, it adds the possibility that greater credibility would be given to the final product,” Weatherby says.
And Weatherby says sometimes Idaho policy makers do take action based on public comment. As an example, he references last year’s legislative session when lawmakers reversed some Medicaid cuts they’d previously made for services to adults with disabilities and mental illnesses.
“Lawmakers were responding to very sincere and earnest pleas for,” he says. “And they could see the negative impacts that would result by their budgetary decisions.”
One reason why the suggestions voiced at the recent education meetings may not find their way into the task force’s final recommendations is that there haven’t been many.
Richard Westerberg chairs the task force for the State Board of Education. He says members have mostly heard general impressions: things like education funding isn’t sufficient or teachers need more support and professional development. But he says those are valuable.
“This whole public gathering of information has really been about trying to find out what people are thinking,” Westerberg says, “trying to find out what they value and what they think’s important.”
Westerberg adds the task force ultimately won’t set policy. It will make recommendations for lawmakers and school boards to adopt or reject. He says the public will have opportunities to weigh in on those when they come up.
Copyright 2013 Boise State Public Radio