The Idaho Department of Education told public school leaders Friday that mid-year budget cuts aren’t “necessarily expected,” but the agency is following Gov. Brad Little’s order to plan for holdbacks.
Last month, Little’s Division of Financial Management (DFM) told agency directors to make internal plans for 2%, 4% and 6% budget holdbacks in fiscal year 2026, which starts next week. DFM also placed limits on agency budgets — prohibiting most requests for new spending — for the following fiscal year, which starts July 2026.
The spending limits come as state revenues fell short of projections in back-to-back months and after Statehouse Republicans passed, and Little signed, a series of tax cuts altogether worth $453 million.
On Friday, IDE chief financial officer Gideon Tolman relayed the message to superintendents and other public school administrators. IDE will put together the holdback plans for the public schools budget and keep school leaders in the loop, Tolman wrote.
“These scenarios are not necessarily expected, but we’re being asked to plan for them out of an abundance of caution,” he wrote.
The Twin Falls Times-News first reported the IDE letter.
Read Tolman’s letter here.
Little’s budget office called for “maintenance-only” spending requests for FY 27. These can include a 1% placeholder for employee raises and health insurance increases along with salary- and transportation-related adjustments set by state law.
But maintenance budgets can’t include state-funded “enhancements.” That means any proposals to increase special education funding — and address an $82 million gap statewide — could be off the table next legislative session.
“We know special education and operational costs are not decreasing, and we will keep working through scenarios to address those needs,” Tolman wrote.
Misty Swanson, executive director for the Idaho School Boards Association, said talks of holdbacks and maintenance-only budgets are “increasing angst” among public school leaders.
Trustees are already struggling to manage state-mandated salary increases, “significant changes” to federal funding and the “ever-growing costs of special education,” she said. Public schools also didn’t get additional operational funds for FY 26.
“Simply put, there is little to no room to make cuts without negatively impacting students,” Swanson said by email.
Idaho’s teachers’ union also pointed to the special education funding gap in a statement Wednesday.
Rather than addressing this need, lawmakers funneled “millions into unaccountable private school vouchers while also irresponsibly slashing state revenue,” said Chris Parri, political director for the Idaho Education Association.
Statehouse Republicans this year created a refundable tax credit covering private school and home-school expenses. The new $50 million program was among $453 million in total tax relief passed by the Legislature and signed by Little this year. They also slashed income taxes, increased the state’s grocery tax credit and boosted existing property tax relief funds — $50 million of which will benefit public schools.
“This budget crisis was entirely foreseeable,” Parri said by email. “(A)s usual, educators, parents and communities will be left to clean up the mess — something IEA members will be doing at the ballot box in 2026.”
