Idaho teachers union budget mess is its own fault - will members demand accountability?
It hasn't been a good year for the Idaho teachers union.
In other words, it is dealing with a major budget mess. And it has no one to blame but itself.
After all, the IEA was forced to pay $70,000 to cover state taxpayer expenses that resulted from the union's frivolous lawsuit against education choice. The union lost the case in a unanimous decision in February.
That was a choice.
Then came the second blow - Idaho's House Bill 516. That's the new law that stopped school districts from using taxpayer-funded payroll systems to collect union dues and requires unions to reimburse districts for paid employee time used for union activities.
During the debate, lawmakers and the public were told taxpayers weren’t subsidizing the union.
Now the IEA is cutting staff and closing offices — and it says HB 516 is one of the reasons its operating environment has become more difficult.
Six months ago, I wrote in these pages that Idaho hadn't banned unions. It had simply stopped doing their paperwork.
Teachers remained free to join a union. Unions remained free to advocate for their members. Collective bargaining remained legal.
The difference was that unions would increasingly have to pay the costs of operating their own organizations. They'd have to convince teachers to voluntarily make their union dues, as opposed to forcing them to.
According to some reports, Idaho school districts processed about $4.4 million in union dues annually for more than 5,000 educators. Now, that's not happening.
Going forward, if the IEA provides teachers with enough value to justify membership, educators are perfectly capable of voluntarily paying dues directly to it and the union's budget problems won't last.
Nobody forced the union to rely on taxpayer-supported systems to perform work it could have been doing itself. And nobody forced the IEA to join a lawsuit seeking to overturn an education-choice program for Idaho families.
But even though 2026 has been a forgettable year, the IEA is not going away.
Thousands of Idaho educators may continue to believe union membership provides them value, and they have every right to organize, associate and spend their money accordingly.
But perhaps this moment should prompt a different conversation among those members.
Teachers are asked every day to stretch limited resources, focus on students and demonstrate results. They should be able to demand the same discipline from the people they pay to represent them.
They should be asking whether their dues are best spent on unsuccessful lawsuits against educational opportunities for other Idaho families. They should be asking why their organization came to depend on taxpayers performing administrative functions on its behalf. And they should be asking whether the priorities of union leadership actually reflect the priorities of educators working in Idaho classrooms.
Idaho teachers make a significant commitment to their students, their schools and their profession.
They deserve representation that demonstrates an equal commitment to them.
