Rep. Marv Hagedorn, R-Meridian, arguing against the Democratic proposal in JFAC to unfreeze a year of the two years of experience-level pay increases that lawmakers have frozen in the past for school teachers and administrators, said doing that "for one particular group would be a very dangerous precedent to set." He said it would prompt proposals for "going down and backfilling ... for all the other CEC (change in employee compensation) that we weren't able to give during our downturn."

Sen. Nicole LeFavour, D-Boise, said, "I think it's important to understand the difference between unfreezing the grid and increasing the minimum salary. The minimum salary only affects those new teachers. But unfreezing the grid is something really important we have to do to retain some of our good teachers who frankly are leaving the profession in droves right now."

The Democratic proposal for the first division of the public school budget, the adminstrators division, then failed on a 4-16 party-line vote, and the Republican proposal passed on a 16-4 vote. The same issue is up in the next division, the teachers division.