Senate takes up public school budgets
The Senate has reconvened and is taking up the five public school budget bills that earlier passed the House. The first one, on the division of administrators, passed on a 26-7 vote, with opposition coming from the Senate's six Democrats who are present and Sen. Gary Schroeder, R-Moscow. "Cutting budgets for public schools and public school administrators is not something that any of us in this body would like to be doing," said Sen. Dean Mortimer, R-Idaho Falls, the floor sponsor of the bill, HB 323. "The current economic times demand the cuts that we've done, and as a finance committee, we have worked very diligently to keep those cuts to the absolute minimum."