No! Given GQP Opposition To, Defunding Of Public Education, Businesses Rethinking Idaho As Location

[hatrack]

Political hostility to public education in the Republican-dominated Idaho Legislature is causing some businesses to doubt the wisdom of moving to or expanding in a state that ranks at or near the bottom in what it spends on K-12 students and has one of the nation’s worst graduation rates. The Legislature also targeted higher education earlier this year when it cut $2.5 million from universities despite a budget surplus. An influential libertarian group that wants to abolish public education entirely says it will push for a $20 million cut to universities in 2022.

For preschoolers, lawmakers earlier this year rejected a $6 million early childhood learning federal grant from the Trump administration. One Republican lawmaker said he opposed anything making it easier for mothers to work outside the home.

EDIT

The U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences for the 2018-2019 school year said only five states and the District of Columbia had worse high school graduation rates than Idaho’s 81%. The Idaho State Department of Education said the graduation rate rose to 82.1% for 2019-2020, a school year that included the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic, and the state eliminated some graduation requirements. According to the National Education Association, the $7,705 Idaho spent per student in the 2019-2020 school year ranked it last in the nation. The association also estimates the average national classroom teacher salary at $65,000. Idaho ranks 39th with an average salary of just under $53,000 and 35th in average starting salary at $38,000.

Boise-based computer chip maker Micron Technology, one of Idaho’s largest employers, earlier this month announced plans to build a 500-worker, memory design center in Georgia. The company is the nation’s second-largest semi-conductor maker, with product development sites in five other states and eight countries. Micron Chief People Officer April Arnzen, in a statement to The Associated Press, said the Atlanta Design Center will give it an opportunity to attract technical talent from a large and diverse student population from the area’s strong university presence, which includes Emory University, Georgia Tech, Morehouse College, Spelman College and the University of Georgia.

EDIT

https://www.oregonlive.com/education/2021/12/war-on-public-education-in-idaho-causes-businesses-to-rethink-locating-expanding-there-leaders-say.html

[samnsara]

1. idaho schools are full of pot holes too!

[TheBlackAdder]

5. Soon, Idaho won't even keep the Idaho Potato Battery Technology Institute due to their poor ed.

[2naSalit]

2. They want the education to be...

Homeschooling or entirely based on mormonism one way or another. Everyone else can self-deport because they sure won't help you survive outside the church network if you stay.

[jmowreader]

16. Not just Mormonism

In Kootenai County, we have lots of church schools and, as far as I know, none of them are Mormon.

[2naSalit]

20. That's interesting.

I wasn't over in that end of the state for long so I didn't get a good read on it at the local level. I do know that SEID is eat up with that sect and not being a member is really a thing there no matter what you are doing there.

[jmowreader]

21. This end of the state is largely right-wing Californians

The North Utah thing you folks down there have to endure isn't an issue up here. These are the stake centers in North Idaho:

Boundary County, our northernmost county, has no stake. Anyone in Boundary County that wants to visit the Stake Center goes to Sandpoint.

Bonner County has one stake in Sandpoint.

Nez Perce County has one in Lewiston.

Kootenai County has two: one in Coeur d'Alene, the other in Hayden. For some reason Post Falls, which is three times the size of Hayden, doesn't have one.

Latah, Clearwater, Shoshone, Benewah, Lewis and Idaho Counties have no stakes at all.

All these stakes are members of the Spokane Temple.

So...four stakes in all.

On the other hand, Idaho Falls (America's only source of cobalt-60, a very useful radioisotope) has 18 stakes, Rexburg (where BYU-Idaho is) has 22, Nampa (home of Steve Symms, who unseated Frank Church) has six, Blackfoot (where the sheriff threatened to shoot someone for sticking a paper turkey on his door) has five, Pocatello (home of one of America's biggest semiconductor factories) has eight, Boise (the state capitol) has seven and Meridian (the Boise suburb where we get our congressmen) has eight.

[Irish_Dem]

3. Some foreign auto manufacturers in the US have been shocked at the illiteracy here.

I have a friend who is an automotive engineer and worked as floor supervisor in various car manufacturing planets earlier in his career. The foreign owners would move the plants from the US northern states to the US southern states because it meant much lower wages and no unions.

The owners were shocked when the new hires could not read the simple factory directions on where to stand, what to do, etc. The directions had to be changed to consist of only pictures.

[PatSeg]

8. That is horrifying, but sadly believable

Lower wages doesn't necessarily mean cost savings if you sacrifice competence and skills in the process.

[Irish_Dem]

9. Exactly. The owners ended up with more costs to cope with the problem.

(BTW Some of these employees were high school graduates who couldn't read.)

Yes it is horrifying to see this kind of illiteracy.
High school grads who cannot read simple directions.

Yes it cost the owners quite a bit of money to build the factory, move supervisory staff down there, etc. And then to find the new hires couldn't read was a shock. I don't know how they passed the employment interview. The owners assumed they were literate.

And then the owners had to pay for new manuals, and also extra supervisors to use verbal instructions. So it is not cheap to hire people who lack basic reading skills.

[PatSeg]

10. I've known high school graduates

who were educated in the south and I always found it amazing how little they learned. You'd think that a large corporation would have done some more research before spending all that money to relocate, but I guess they got what they deserved. Just imagine the workers who lost their jobs because of the move and the adjacent businesses that were affected. Often whole communities are destroyed by such moves.

[Irish_Dem]

11. Right I was surprised too.

The owners are from a country where the literacy rate is 99%.
And there is a huge emphasis upon education starting with very young children.
And they had been here in the US for some time in the northern states.
I guess it did not occur to them that people would not be able to read simple instructions. Or perhaps they thought it didn't matter.

The US supervisors couldn't figure why they did this. But I guess money talks and they thought it would be a better financial deal.

Fortunately the crisis you describe was averted, the owners decided to keep the northern factory operational, and use the southern factory for less demanding production. So it worked out OK.

[PatSeg]

12. Well, that's good to hear then

I suppose if the owners were from another country, they probably couldn't imagine such illiteracy in a powerful, first world country.

[Irish_Dem]

13. And a country that was smart enough to defeat them in WWII.

[PatSeg]

14. That's really a depressing way to look at it, isn't it?

[Irish_Dem]

15. Yep, national high IQ, willingness to fight for a common good,

dedication, bravery, courage, willing to die for democracy, etc. is all gone.

[PatSeg]

17. We are truly living in a different world

We were on top of the world after World War II with the best schools and highest standard of living in the world. I think it was primarily the runaway consumerism that started in the fifties. It just got worse over the years. People started to care more about "stuff" than principles, ideals, and morality. Success was synonymous with money and "nice guys finish last" mentality.

[Irish_Dem]

18. And once we became a very wealthy superpower we were sitting ducks

for greedy oligarchs across the world and in the US.

They swooped in with hands in the US treasury thanks to corrupt US leadership.

And other countries wanting to be the next superpower who have spent a lot of time and money bringing the US down to size.

There is no doubt, China will be the next superpower. As they rise, the US falls.

Yes it is a far different world Pat from the country my Irish grandparents immigrated to back in the 1920's.

It is indeed ironic. All four of my grandparents were immigrants to this country and came here for a better life for their children and grandchildren. And now all of the countries they came have higher standards of living, social network, healthcare, education and happiness index than the US.

[PatSeg]

22. That really is ironic

I hadn't thought of it that way. Throughout history, countries rise and fall, so there was never any guarantee that we would remain on top forever. A lot of what I'm seeing rather reminds me of the fall of Rome. People became too rich, too soft, and too decadent.

Sadly Americans tend to talk about how "great" we are instead of how how moral, fair, and generous we are. So few of them even realize how much we've declined.

[Irish_Dem]

23. I think most of us thought it would last longer.

America didn't reach full superpower status until 1945, after WWII.
So our rise and fall happened quickly.

Yes I keep think of Roman history too. The Roman Empire lasted 1000 years!
But fall it did, eventually.

I think many younger people don't realize how things have changed for the worse or the better.

[PatSeg]

24. I agree

that most people thought it would have lasted longer. The less informed, undoubtedly thought it would be forever. Sadly, many younger people are ill informed and probably don't see America in a historical context at all.

[Thomas Hurt]

4. it is a natural conservative reaction to destroy public education to keep people they...

consider peasants as ignorant as possible.

[TheBlackAdder]

6. They want their 'forced-breeding society' but don't want to pay the costs of educating its product.

.

In Texas, they're going to get hammered, because it costs over $320K in public money to raise a child though the educational system. Right now they are at a stasis, but as more and more children are added to the populous, there will be an imbalance and this will add to the local, county and state funds required for education, feeding, heating, housing, etc that manifests itself in various forms.

If just 10,000 kids are added each and every year to the system, after 18 years, that adds over $3 Billion to the taxes residents of the state must pay. This will eventually financially constrain and bankrupt the state. Their only solution then would be to cut educational funding.

.

[Irish_Dem]

19. Yes, oppressors always keep their victims as ignorant as possible.

This is how they maintain control, and more easily manipulate them into compliance.

[multigraincracker]

7. No problem, just let them

eat cake.

[Buckeyeblue]

25. Isn't Idaho full of Randy Weaver types?

Who I believe was a white supremacist who wanted to live like it was 1840. They have some wacked notion of a god that wants everyone to be stupid and poor.

It's too bad because it's a beautiful state. But it's full of ugly people.

The low population and large number of western states is one of the reasons Republicans have any sort of foot hold.

We should combine ND, SD, MT, ID, WY and UT into one state.