The influential conservative group making it harder for Idaho districts to fix their schools
The Idaho Freedom Foundation has gone beyond the education culture wars by targeting local bond and levy elections, which districts rely on heavily to build and repair schools.
The blue and orange leaflets that arrived in Idaho Falls mailboxes ahead of the school bond election in November 2022 looked like the usual fare that voters across the country get. Sent out by the school district, the mailers encouraged people in the eastern Idaho city to register to vote and listed bullet points highlighting what the bond would pay for.
But the mailers, along with other materials the district distributed, would lead the county prosecutor’s office to fine the superintendent and the district’s spokesperson, accusing them of violating election law by using taxpayer money to advocate for the bond measure. According to the prosecutor, it was illegal for district officials to describe the schools as “overcrowded” and “aged” or to say that students “need modern, safe, and secure schools.”
Such penalties were made possible by a 2018 state law originally pushed by the Idaho Freedom Foundation, a conservative lobbying group that has become a big player in Idaho Republican politics. The foundation has stoked hostility toward public education across the state, pushing book bans in school libraries and accusing districts of indoctrinating students with “woke” ideas like critical race theory.
But unlike groups in other states, the Freedom Foundation has extended its reach by targeting school bond and levy elections, which have traditionally been local issues and are the main ways districts build and repair schools.
