The Associated Students University of Idaho (ASUI) is partnering with other Idaho higher education institutions to create a scorecard that tracks where state legislators stand on education issues.
Boise State University, Lewis and Clark State College, College of Western Idaho and Idaho State University are all currently in partnership for the project, with community colleges from across the state still coming on board, said ASUI President Nicole Skinner.
“Essentially we want to determine which bills from each legislative session are higher education related,” Skinner said. “Then, as a collaboration of student governments, determine how much weight we want to give each bill, figure out who voted for what and turn this into a percentage.”
Skinner said colleges in partnership will have a direct role in determining the weight that different legislation has on the report card.
“Ultimately this will make our legislature more aware of the importance of higher education in Idaho,” said Kaleb Smith, student body president at Boise State University. “In Louisiana this system has directly affected the state funding that universities have received.”
Currently, ASUI is working on creating the report card for distribution at public colleges and universities throughout the state, Skinner said. It is generating one based on the state legislative session in the spring in hopes it will be ready for release in October. The scorecard will include information on higher education related issues that make it to the legislature, from bills related to funding to policy changes, Skinner said.
The project is meant to be as nonpartisan and as objective as possible, Skinner said, and will only include information on the bills each legislator votes for.
“We feel like if we leave it to just pure numbers, like who voted for what bill, it will be received much better,” Skinner said.
The project is not in the scope of the State Board of Education, Skinner said, but the board is aware. She said board members are updated at a monthly student advisory council meeting, which is a chance for student government presidents from across Idaho to collaborate.
Skinner has been using Louisiana State University’s student government issued legislative report card as a template for the scorecard in Idaho.
“As far as I know, LSU’s is the only other one,” Skinner said. “We’re taking their outline and making it better in terms of distribution.”
In 2015, LSU released its first report card and has continued the project since. Like ASUI’s outline, LSU’s report card is based solely on the numbers, and is released in PDF form for viewing.
“I want this to be a sustainable project, it may not be a priority of every administration that follows me,” Skinner said, “but I want to make this easily replicable.”
ASUI senators will be a part of implementing the project, Skinner said, and are part of a larger initiative to have student government officials act as spokespeople for civic engagement to get students involved in the decision-making processes that affect them. ASUI is also hoping to create a scorecard for the upcoming legislative session, Skinner said.
“This can directly affect students at all the universities in Idaho and will make people more aware of what the legislature is actively doing for higher education,” Smith said. “This can in turn cause more student civic engagement and could even go as far as cause a higher voter turnout among students.”
Ellamae Burnell can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @EllamaeBurnell