Schools chief debate turns to charters

BOISE – Tom Luna, the Republican candidate for state superintendent of schools, called Wednesday for separate charter elementary schools for children who are struggling to learn English.

“In my district in Nampa, we have 14 elementary schools – every one of them struggles with non-English-speaking students,” Luna said during a live televised debate. “Imagine if we had one school – a school of choice so nobody was forced to go there – but just one school would have the best and brightest teachers in language acquisition. We could bring the students to that school, get ‘em up to grade level in English and then transition them back into the traditional school.”

Democratic candidate Jana Jones strongly denounced the idea as “segregation,” as the two faced off in the “Idaho Debates,” sponsored by the League of Women Voters and the Idaho Press Club and broadcast live on Idaho Public Television.

It was one of many disagreements – including a protracted argument on the relevance of an anti-gay marriage amendment to the job of the state’s top school official – between the two candidates.

“We learned a long time ago that segregating kids based on disability or limited English proficiency, even if the parents may want to choose or not to choose to go there, that that is not in the best interest of children,” Jones declared. “We should never propose or promote that that is what we want for our kids.”

Instead, every school should excel and meet its students’ needs, she said.

Luna seized on her response. “That’s wrong,” he said. “That puts the bureaucracy and the bureaucrat at a higher level in deciding what’s best for a child than it does the parent, and we can never have a successful public education system that meets the needs of every child as long as we have an attitude that the bureaucracy knows what’s best.”

Jones, who holds a doctorate in education, is the current chief deputy superintendent of schools.

Luna is a Nampa businessman who’s served on his local school board and was an education adviser to the Bush administration, but has no formal training or professional background in education.

Throughout the debate, Luna pounded on the theme of parental choice.

He said he has abandoned his support for a voucher system that would give parents public money to send kids to private schools – something he championed four years ago when he ran unsuccessfully for the same position.

“That was four years ago when we didn’t have the kind of choice that we have today,” Luna said, noting that Idaho has more charter schools, magnet schools, special academies and the like today within its public school system. He called for more of all of those.

Both candidates noted that the Idaho Constitution wouldn’t allow a voucher system, because of its strong prohibition on spending public money for religious instruction.

When the candidates were given the opportunity to question each other, Luna quizzed Jones about not backing HJR 2, the constitutional amendment on the November ballot that would ban same-sex marriage, civil unions or domestic partnerships.

Jones called that a “personal issue for me,” and added, “It’s not something we’re dealing with in our public schools.”

But Luna disagreed. “I don’t think the superintendent of public instruction can operate in a vacuum,” he said.

“There is a direct connection between strong traditional families and the success that we have in our schools. … I think it’s important to know, as somebody who is going to have such influence in our schools and be the spokesperson for our schools, to know that that person would always defend the traditional family and the children that are in it.”

Jones responded, “We have single-parent families, we have all kinds of families in Idaho, and we need to support all families. And I’m offended that you think I don’t support traditional families because that’s not even remotely correct.”

She noted that she’s been married for 33 years “to an absolutely wonderful man” and has three daughters and grandchildren.

“The state superintendent has to be accepting and open to all the children in the state, to all the families that they serve, and … make sure that we’re not being judgmental and we’re not being biased in the way we approach education in this state,” Jones said.

Luna warned that the superintendent will have to deal with the same-sex marriage issue because “we’ve always had attempts by liberal gay rights activist groups to get into our high schools and form clubs that the parents objected to, and we also have groups like Planned Parenthood, who are also working to defeat the marriage amendment, that are always trying to get access into our schools so that they can give our daughters abortion counseling without our consent.

“I think the superintendent has to be aware of all of these issues that could come into our schools and take away parents’ rights,” Luna said.

Jones said issues like whether student clubs are formed or whether organizations come to schools are local issues, made locally.

“It shouldn’t be from the state level or the state superintendent’s level,” she said.

The election is Nov. 7.