The U.S. Department of Education’s top deputy will tour two Treasure Valley schools Monday.
From 9 to 9:45 a.m., Mitchell Zais is slated to tour One Stone, an independent, tuition-free high school in Downtown Boise.
From 1 to 2 p.m., he will tour Elevate Academy, a new Caldwell charter school that offers career-technical education programs for at-risk middle and high school students. He is scheduled to have a media availability at 2 p.m.
According to a U.S. Education Department news release, Zais will use the Elevate Academy tour to tout one of the Trump administration’s education proposals, the “education freedom scholarship” program. The proposal, which the administration has proposed in the House and the Senate, would create $5 billion in federal tax credits for donors who contribute to state-based scholarship programs. The program has been a recurring talking point for the Education Department; for example, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos talked up the proposal last month during a tour of schools in Alaska.
Zais, a former state schools superintendent in South Carolina, has served as DeVos’ top deputy since 2018.
Disclosure: One Stone, Elevate Academy and Idaho Education News are funded through grants from the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Family Foundation.
