In a recent letter, Chris Cargill praised Idaho’s new law to subsidize private education with public tax dollars as “healthy competition.”

If this is competition, it’s the most lopsided contest in Idaho history.

Imagine a football game. One team gets to recruit the best athletes from across the state—a 6-foot-4 quarterback who can throw the ball 70 yards on a dime, every lineman built for the NFL, and receivers who can sprint 100 yards in less than 10 seconds. They recruit every player they want, no limits.

The other team? By rule, they must play everyone who shows up. Students who’ve never played before. Students with disabilities that limit their ability to walk, see, or hear. No tryouts, no cuts—and every player gets equal playing time on the field regardless of ability. Those are the rules.

But it doesn’t stop there. The first team not only gets to recruit the best of the best, they also don’t have to follow any of the rules of the game. Not one. No penalties for holding, offsides, late hits, or pass interference. They get to play by whatever rules they want.

But for the other team? They get a rule book the size of War and Peace—and they’re required to follow every single rule, every play, with penalties for every infraction.

That’s not competition; that’s a rigged game.

Idaho’s public schools are governed by more than a thousand laws in Idaho Code. These laws cover everything from teacher certification and student safety to special education, curriculum, transportation, and financial transparency—all designed to create the “uniform and thorough system of public, free common schools” required by Idaho’s Constitution.

Private schools, by contrast, are exempt from nearly all of these laws. They get to select their students, design their curriculum without oversight, set their own employment rules, and operate without public accountability or regulation. Yet under this new scheme, they would receive public tax dollars—without the public responsibility that comes with them.

That’s not competition. It’s subsidized advantage.

Idaho’s founders were clear about the purpose of public education. Our constitutional language requiring the establishment of a “uniform and thorough system of public, free common schools” was not an accident; it was a promise that every child—regardless of income, religion, race, or ability—would have access to a quality education funded and governed by the people.

Public schools fulfill that promise every day. They take every child who walks through the door. They serve the gifted and the struggling, the athletes and the artists, the quiet and the loud, the able-bodied and those with profound disabilities. They welcome all faiths and no faith. That’s not just a moral duty—it’s the law.

Private schools don’t have to do any of that. And now, under the banner of “competition,” they’ll be funded by the very taxpayers whose children they can refuse to serve.

When public funds go to private institutions that don’t play by the same rules, we’re not fostering competition—we’re abandoning fairness.

If we truly believe in the Idaho value of fair play, then we should insist that anyone who takes public money be held to the same public standards. Until that happens, calling this “competition” is more than a fallacy — it’s favoritism disguised as reform.