Rural school facilities funding bill heads to House

BOISE (Idaho EdNews.org) — A bill to recharge a rural school facilities fund is heading to the House. 

The House Education Committee Monday unanimously advanced House Bill 338. The bipartisan legislation attempts to spark a dormant facilities fund that could offer gap financing for school construction projects. 

The Salmon School District is again serving as a poster child — as it did a year ago, when lawmakers passed a $1.5 billion facilities funding bill. Salmon voters in May approved a $20 million bond for a new school building while a group of volunteers led a fundraising effort for the remaining $9 million balance. 

Breann Green, a leading member of the volunteer Salmon School Needs Assessment Committee, told lawmakers Monday that the fundraising effort has come up about $3 million short. The committee supports HB 338. “It will be a tool that we may use to finish our school.”

HB 338 would increase the “school facilities cooperative fund” from $25.5 million to $50.5 million, and the bill would remove an existing requirement that recipients surrender to state supervision for the duration of a construction project — if they ask for $5 million or less. 

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Districts would be obligated to repay the cooperative fund over 20 years, but it could serve as a grant fund rather than a loan fund in some cases, said Rep. Rod Furniss, a co-sponsor of the bill. The cooperative fund repayment mechanism would be part of a cascading list of uses for annual property tax relief funding that goes to a school district. 

The list became law two years ago, when House Bill 292 divided more than $100 million between districts to help pay down bonds and levies. Districts must first use the money to pay down bonds, then supplemental levies and plant facilities levies. 

RELATED | ‘Everything on the table’: How parents and neighbors ended Salmon’s decades-long school bond drought

Repayments to the cooperative fund would come after bonds in the HB 292 priority list, so districts with a bond wouldn’t have to make cooperative fund payments until their bonds are paid off. Cooperative fund payments would be forgiven every year that a district has a bond on the books. 

Furniss, R-Rigby, used Salmon as an example to explain the process. The district has a 10-year bond, which means it wouldn’t have to make payments on the cooperative fund until year 11. In other words, about half of the cooperative funds would be forgiven.

This article was originally posted on IdahoEdNews.org on March 3, 2025

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