Climate change, school science standards and administrative rules…
When the House Education Committee recently voted to approve new state school science standards only after deleting five sections referring to climate change, there were ripples of outrage around the state. Many worried that the Legislature was trying to delete references to scientific matters from the state’s school textbooks. But the move didn’t do that; the standards are minimum benchmarks for what school children should be expected learn, developed by the state Board of Education, state Department of Education and top Idaho science teachers after a year of public input; they don’t preclude additional information from being taught.
The department is planning to bring back revised standards next year for lawmakers to consider. The science standards haven’t been updated since 2001, in part because of past objections to references to certain topics from state lawmakers.
The Senate Education Committee is scheduled to consider the science standards on Thursday. But under the arcane rules governing administrative rules in Idaho, if the Senate panel doesn’t go along with the House, the standards would be rejected, and at the end of this year’s legislative session, Idaho would go back to the 2001 standards.
That’s because the standards are being proposed as part of a temporary rule under the state Administrative Procedures Act. Temporary rules expire unless both houses extend them, as opposed to “pending,” or permanent, rules, which stand unless both houses reject them. “They both have to agree, to extend it,” said Dennis Stevenson, state administrative rules coordinator.
“It doesn’t make a lot of sense – even if you are well versed in it, it still is a little bit confusing,” Stevenson said. “We’re one of the few states that have a process like this.”
The Senate committee could vote to approve the standards as-is, without the House’s deletions. But if the House didn’t agree to that, the entire temporary rule containing the standards would expire. Either way, lawmakers will get another crack at the issue next year with the pending rule.
