I am writing this first as a mom.

I am a mother who has sent her children into Idaho’s public education system and trusted that system to teach them, support them and prepare them for their futures. I am also a mother whose child struggled deeply within that system. That experience eventually led me into education advocacy, where I have spent years supporting other Idaho parents as they try to understand what their children need and how to advocate for them.

Even after years of doing this work, I will be the first to admit that Idaho’s education system can be incredibly difficult to understand. Funding formulas, appropriations, agency budget requests, legislative decisions and one-time versus ongoing funding are complicated. Most parents do not have the time or access necessary to investigate every detail. We depend on education reporters to help us understand.

That is why I was so concerned by the Sept. 1 headline, “High-needs program faces spending reduction, as Critchfield focuses on K-12 funding formula.”

To a parent reading that headline, the message seems clear: Superintendent Debbie Critchfield is choosing to reduce support for students with the most significant disabilities so she can spend that money on another priority.

But that is not the full story.

The original $5 million for the new high-needs special education program was assembled from the interest available within Department of Education accounts. It was not an ongoing $5 million appropriation that the superintendent has now decided to cut. The program is also reimbursement-based and so new that the department does not yet have the data needed to know what its annual cost will be. The $1.7 million in the new request reflects what remains available from those same funding sources.

Those facts matter enormously.

 The word “instead” is also troubling because it creates the impression that Critchfield is taking money from children with significant disabilities and redirecting it toward a completely separate agenda. In reality, the proposed work to modernize Idaho’s K–12 funding formula could direct additional resources to students with disabilities, low-income students, English learners and other children whose needs are not adequately recognized by our current system.

Idaho’s school funding formula has not been rewritten since 1994. The students in our classrooms, the needs of our communities and the costs of providing an education have changed significantly in more than 30 years. Trying to create a system in which funding more closely follows the actual needs of students is not abandoning high-needs children. It is part of the work required to support them more fairly and consistently.

I am not suggesting that Superintendent Critchfield, or any elected official, should be protected from scrutiny. Parents deserve accountability, and thoughtful reporting is essential to it. But accountability also requires context. When important information appears only after a headline and opening paragraphs have already shaped the reader’s opinion, the damage is often done.

This is especially concerning during an election year.

Parents and voters deserve a fair understanding of not only this budget request, but also Critchfield’s broader record. Her work has helped expand evidence-based literacy training for Idaho teachers, strengthen dyslexia support, invest in career and technical education, establish financial literacy requirements and create the very high-needs special education program now being portrayed as facing a deliberate cut.

I did not become involved in education advocacy because of politics. I became involved because I watched my own child struggle and learned how deeply education decisions affect the lives and emotional well-being of children and families. I have sat beside parents who were scared, overwhelmed and trying desperately to understand a system they trusted with their children.

Those parents rely on the information they are given. They form opinions from it. They vote based on it.

We do not all have to agree about Superintendent Critchfield’s priorities. But we should at least be given the complete context necessary to evaluate them honestly. Idaho’s parents, educators and voters deserve more than a headline that leads them toward a conclusion the full facts do not support.

Our children are too important, and the decisions before us are too consequential, for anything less.

Robin Zikmund an Idaho mother and founder of Decoding Dyslexia Idaho.