"We Weren't Spending This on Ice Cream": Idaho State Board's Marie Antoinette Moment After Wasting $15 Million
Education bureaucrats ignored direct orders from lawmakers, burned through millions in federal funds, delivered nothing, and then told taxpayers to be grateful the waste wasn't worse.
Back in 2010, Idaho built this massive database called ISEE to track everything in our schools. Students, teachers, test scores, funding. It was supposed to show real-time data on how your kid’s school was performing, so that lawmakers and others could make smart decisions with your tax dollars (it collects information from over 700 schools and more than 300,000 students).
But by 2015, the Legislature’s own auditors said the system wasn’t doing what it was supposed to do. It became a glorified calculator for federal paperwork - classic government efficiency, amirite?
So in 2022, the Governor, the State Board, and the Legislature committed millions in federal money to drag this dinosaur into the modern era. The original plan called for $18.9 million to get it done.
First, they spent an entire year trying to figure out who should do the work. A whole year. Instead of hiring someone who knew how to do all this they decided to get cute and experiment with a brand-new procurement process that nobody on staff had ever touched before. It bombed so spectacularly they scrapped the whole thing and haven’t used it since. But now they’d burned a year and the federal spending clock was ticking.
(This was all before I showed up in the senate, BTW)
Fast forward to the 2024-25 budget, the Legislature looked the State Board dead in the eye and said: “spend this federal COVID money on ISEE. That’s it. Nothing else.” Crystal clear instructions a kindergartner could follow.
So what’d they do?
Well, I just found out about 30 minutes ago that The State Board took $1.8 million of that money and spent it on… whatever they felt like. A dyslexia handbook. A STEM center. A math program. They outright ignored the Legislature’s explicit orders. The State Board decided they knew better.
At the same time, they’re burning through $6.2 million trying to meet federal deadlines they’d already blown by wasting that first year. It’s a rushed, sloppy process. You know what happened to those warnings? Nothing. They never reached the lawmakers. Representative Wendy Horman (chair of budget committee) had zero idea they’d even hired a contractor to do this work. Apparently, a writer for an education publication had to tell her about it!
Let that sink in…
The people controlling billions in education spending (the lawmakers) were completely in the dark about a multimillion-dollar contract. This is the transparency and accountability we’re promised every time they ask for more money.
Then, March 2025 rolls around.
The federal government looks at this mess and says “We’re out.” They yank $8.5 million in funding because Idaho couldn’t deliver. Two months later, the State Board puts the whole project on ice and a new executive director, Jennifer White, comes in and inherits a smoking dumpster fire that’s 0% her fault.
On Wednesday of this week, the State Board finally dragged themselves in front of lawmakers and confessed they’d blown that $1.8 million on unauthorized spending. White said, and I quote: “We weren’t spending this on ice cream. That being said, this won’t happen again.”
That’s the bar we’re setting now?
As long as it wasn’t ice cream, we’re good? I kind of wish it WAS ice cream, then at least we’d have something tangible to show for it.
But instead, schools are still stuck with a database that hasn’t been meaningfully updated since 2010. You still can’t get basic information about how your local schools are performing. School districts are still burning 1,500 hours a year feeding data into a system that gives you nothing useful back. West Ada (the state’s largest district) is dedicating the equivalent of nine months of full-time work just uploading information into this black hole.
The state’s lit over $15 million on fire. There’s no plan to finish what they started, and even if there was, it’ll take at least two more years and nobody knows how much more money.
» These are the people demanding you hand over more funding…
» These are the people who fight tooth and nail against school choice…
» These are the people who tell parents they have no right to know what’s being taught in classrooms...
» These are the people who insist they’re the experts and you need to sit down and let them do their jobs!
Well, look at the job they’re doing.
This is exactly why the school choice movement exists.
This is exactly why parents are pulling their kids out of government schools in record numbers. This is exactly why we’re skeptical every time education bureaucrats come hat-in-hand asking for more money to “fix” the system.
They can’t follow simple spending instructions from the Legislature. They can’t meet basic federal deadlines. They can’t keep elected officials informed about how they’re spending public money. They can’t deliver a working product after three years and $15 million. They experimented with processes nobody understood, ignored warnings from their own staff, and then acted surprised when the whole thing collapsed.
But they want total control over your child’s education. They want you to trust them with more of your money. They want you to believe that any criticism of their performance is an attack on teachers and students.
Here’s the truth:
Teachers are buying classroom supplies out of their own pockets while bureaucrats are lighting millions on fire and delivering nothing
Students are stuck in schools that can’t even provide parents with basic performance data
Taxpayers are funding an education establishment that operates with zero accountability until an eductaion blogger starts digging through public records and forces them to come clean
If a private company blew $15 million, ignored client instructions, kept stakeholders in the dark, and delivered zero results, they’d be out of business. But in government education, they just ask for more money and promise it’ll be different next time.
The education establishment loves to frame school choice as an attack on public education. No. School choice is the natural response to this level of incompetence. When the people running the system prove they can’t be trusted with basic tasks, parents find alternatives. When bureaucrats treat tax dollars like Monopoly money (many such cases), voters demand options. When the establishment fights transparency and accountability at every turn, families vote with their feet.
Idaho parents deserve better.
Idaho taxpayers deserve better. And the next time education bureaucrats come asking for more funding (which will be in a few months, the largest education budget EVER - over $3 BILLION last I saw), remember this disaster. Remember the $15 million that vanished with nothing to show for it. Remember the lawmakers who were kept in the dark. Remember the “it wasn’t ice cream” defense.
Then ask yourself: do these people deserve another blank check?
This is why we fight for school choice. This is why we push back when Big Education demands more control and more funding. This is why we insist on transparency and accountability. Because when you peel back the curtain, this is what you find.
Every single time.