Last week, Idaho House Speaker Mike Moyle sent invitations to a few legislators to serve on an eight-member Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in Education Working Group. It's unclear who will lead the group and who else will serve on the panel.

Please forgive the Idaho Freedom Foundation (IFF) for not falling over ourselves with enthusiasm about finally seeing something being done regarding the DEI plague on Idaho education. Color us skeptical.

Working groups: Much ado about nothing

Legislative working groups are hamster wheels. They form, meet, cost money, write reports, sometimes make recommendations, and fizzle out. 

Here’s what you can expect from a DEI working group:

1. Costly: At least $10,000 in travel, per diem, and other expenses. These are taxpayer dollars.

2. Time-consuming: Working groups typically meet several times over months, and sometimes years. A DEI working group will meet during the Fall and probably into Winter with the charge to create a report covering DEI institutions and activities in Idaho education.

3. Susceptible to interest groups: Working groups typically seek “input” from “stakeholders” on key issues. No doubt, this DEI working group will hear from educators, administrators, unions, and other special interests, all having no inclination to curtail or end DEI offices, administrators, or policies on campuses. Working groups are often led around by bureaucrats who come with an agenda and predetermined outcomes.

4. Questionable legislative recommendations, if any: Because of the process and the skewed input, working groups typically do not produce the results promised. Some working groups never come to a conclusion, some give reports with no solutions, and others produce legislative recommendations ill-equipped to tackle the issues.

For example, Idaho Education News, in 2023, wrote about the time, cost, and difficulty for a working group to create a new school funding formula. The new (at the time) Idaho State Superintendent of Public Instruction, Debbie Critchfield, requested the working group finally get results for the 2024-25 school year. 

It didn’t happen. 

Take a look at this snippet from their article:

“The Legislature put together a committee in 2016 to study the funding formula, and work on a rewrite. The committee tried to pass a full-blown rewrite in 2019; the best they could manage was a modest law that essentially created definitions for a ‘student-based funding formula.’”

Now, here we are approaching the 2025 legislative session, and the school funding formula has yet to be solved. Hmm.

Does anyone really believe a DEI working group will accomplish anything? I mean, we’ve seen this act before. Just like Elmer Fudd thinking this will be the time he finally gets his “wabbit,” many conservative optimists out there think this working group will finally kill DEI. Sorry, but history shows such thinking is Looney Tunes. Please prove us wrong.

That said, let’s not be completely pessimistic. Instead of merely naysaying, the IFF offers hope. A legislative working group is not needed. Solutions exist. And we are happy to help break the working-group-meager-results futility cycle.

Idaho already has a DEI Working Group

Legislative leaders don’t need to form a DEI working group to end the waste and harmful policies of DEI in Idaho education. Idaho already has a working group doing the research, reporting the current realities, and proposing solutions: It’s us, the Idaho Freedom Foundation. 

For years now, the IFF has diligently and meticulously reported on DEI spending, waste, fraud, corruption, and indoctrination across Idaho. We have produced no less than 20 articles, reports, bill analyses, and recommendations for what is happening and what needs to be done. For all intents and purposes, the IFF has done everything a diligent, effective “working group” would have done.

Take a look at a sampling of our work:

It’s clear Idaho has a DEI problem infecting its public schools, colleges, and universities. There are tried and proven solutions for the Legislature to restrain and regulate how public dollars should serve the people and not political DEI advocacy. IFF has laid out the research and the policies — all the products a working group might offer — at no cost and with no hamster wheels or political posturing.

Stop talking and do something already

It seems odd for legislative leaders to start a working group amid the DEI battle. Already, a few steps have been taken via bills and budget language, and some legislation has been drafted but killed. Still, we need to get the job done. 

The Legislature has an inkling of what needs to happen, but unfortunately — and ironically — it’s legislative leaders who have been getting in the way.

Last session, Sen. Brian Lenney, along with Sen. Scott Herndon and Rep. Elaine Price, introduced Senate Bill 1357 to accomplish much of what’s needed in higher education. The bill was assigned to the Senate State Affairs committee, where it was promptly drawered by chairman Sen. Jim Guthrie, and that’s where it stayed.

The bill would have banned the creation of DEI offices and divisions and public funds spent on offices, officers, and employees in Idaho colleges and universities. It would have also banned political loyalty tests for admissions or hiring in higher education. Finally, the bill would have prohibited mandatory diversity training for students, faculty, and employees at Idaho's public institutions for higher education. The fiscal note estimates savings of $3.227 million in spending on such nonsense. Alas, the bill is dead.

Another bill, Senate Concurrent Resolution 134, was introduced to call on the Legislative Council to appoint members to a committee for studying DEI in Idaho public colleges and universities. Such a committee (travel, per diem, etc.) would cost $10,000. This resolution for yet another working group didn’t gain much traction in the Senate; it died on the calendar at the close of the legislative session. Nonetheless, Speaker Moyle went ahead with the current “DEI working group” plan anyway.

The brightest outcome on DEI this past year was Senate Bill 1274. This bill — now law — makes clear Idaho's state policy that hiring and admissions decisions must be made on merit. This law also guarantees hiring and admissions decisions made by state agencies, including public colleges and universities, are not "conditioned on a requirement that applicants submit or ascribe to a diversity statement."

Lastly, the Legislature has begun using budget bills to control how public money is spent and restricting it from DEI agendas. Appropriations bills now prohibit using these funds for such purposes. House Bill 734 specifies: “State-appropriated funds shall not be utilized to support diversity, equity, inclusion, or social justice ideology as part of any student activities, clubs, events, or organizations on campus.”

Unfortunately, because colleges and universities get funding from multiple sources beyond the Legislature and the existing fungibility of spending dollars, these institutions maintain their DEI offices and activities by claiming the funding is not from the appropriations but from other sources. They dodge the restrictions.

Small steps, bolder action

To be fair, it’s not like the Legislature has done nothing. As mentioned above, some small but important measures have been accomplished. The DEI problem persists. We need more action.

The Legislature has three very powerful tools in its belt to abolish DEI in Idaho education. First, prohibitions. It is absolutely appropriate for the Legislature to regulate government entities. The activities of all state and local governments are under the purview of the Legislature, so government is obliged to control itself. A strong Legislature with a strong legislative agenda could put an end to all DEI offices, personnel, and activities.

Second, the budget process is often the only lever public education institutions actually respond to. If the Legislature identified the cost of DEI offices and activities across the institutions and reduced spending accordingly, they would eventually respond. Fungibility aside, a series of budget reductions repeated until DEI disappears would get results. Notice this means budget cuts, not merely reductions in the increases — actual cuts. Even if a university tried to move money around, having fewer funds year after year would eventually force policy changes.

Third, for K-12 education, prohibitions and restrictions have been few and paltry. The Legislature, cowed by public education special interests, has been unable to rein in social justice ideology, critical race theory, and other manifestations of DEI in our public schools. The true antidote to nebulous and damaging public school advocacy is competition. Universal school choice, available to all school children and ample enough to provide real options for parents, will force schools to either yield to parents’ wishes to get rid of DEI or lose students to private schools that will do the job.

There you have it. Simple, bold action, coupled with the resolve to see the results through to the end, will get the job done. We don’t need eight legislators sitting around the table over several months, contemplating what is already known and pondering policies already proven elsewhere. We know what needs to be done. The real questions are: Does the Legislature have the will to do it, and does leadership have the spine to let it be done despite all the interest groups pressuring them to stand down?

We at the IFF, and no doubt many parents and students, are very interested in seeing what happens, but optimism remains a scarce commodity. Meanwhile, we spend money, waste time, and spin our hamster wheels, all while our public school children and college students are polluted on a daily basis with more DEI trash dumping. 

Again, please prove us wrong.