My Testimony at the Idaho House Education Committee

The Honorable Chairman and Members of the Idaho House of Representatives Education Committee,

I am Kim Wardwell, a teacher in the Caldwell School District.

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak. As a Peace Corps Volunteer in 1979 & ‘80 in Paraguay, South America, when it was a dictatorship, I developed a deep appreciation and passion for the preservation of the democratic process in our American republic.

It is to that very point that I wish to speak in opposition to Senate Bill 1108. Previously as a high school social studies teacher, I saw many students come to realize and appreciate the brilliant foresight our founding fathers had in building in a system of checks and balances which still is fundamental in our American way of life.

I fear that if SB 1108 is enacted there will no longer be a genuine set of checks and balances to insure that our educational system stays healthy. I foresee that as district superintendents and state legislators have to cope with financial continual annual pressures, that without a system in place for checks and balances – our system will erode and deteriorate to the point where it eventually is no longer viable and robust, no longer able to produce an educated society able to compete sufficiently in the global market.

I fear most the removal of seniority as a protection for teachers. I can readily see the financial point of view of administrators in Idaho that older teachers cost local school districts about twice as much as beginning teachers. We cost more in terms of health premiums and medical expenses, and physical limitations can start to be more of a challenge, even though we continue to improve mentally, emotionally and educationally.

Without the check and balances of collective bargaining, there is little to keep superintendents from succumbing to the temptation of removing older, more expensive teachers as an expedient way to balance the budget? * I believe it won’t take too long for Idaho’s future potential teachers to decide to pursue other careers. Or even if their passion leads them to want to teach a few years while they are young, energetic and relatively inexpensive – they will realize they better get into a profession in which they can have a more reasonable expectation of being able to earn and receive full retirement benefits before they start a family and are locked into a 30-year house mortgage.

With such expediencies, I question how in the long run, we can truly expect to compete in the global market.

Honorable Members of the House of Representatives, I urge you to protect and maintain the checks and balances that collective bargaining has provided so that we can truly discern which cuts need to be made, and which are cuts of expediency that ultimately will do more harm than good.
I urge you to either vote no or significantly revise SB 1108.

Thank you for listening to me.



*Note: After a brief talk with Senator Melinda Smyser prior to the House Ed Committee hearings, it was pointed out to me that the local districts for the last 7 years or so have “pass through” money – similar to what we had when I taught in Washington to where local districts receive additional funding for teachers with additional education and years of experience. In Washington, basically, the local district pays for the base salary, and all of the additional money is paid by the state for experience and additional education.

But when questioned on this very point by House Ed Chair Nonini, I commented that I had referred to pressure on both the local superintendents and the state legislators in dealing with the continuous annual budget issues, and that the expediency of getting rid of senior teachers could be tempting at the state level as well.