By Victor Skinner
EAGnews.org

BOISE, Idaho – Teachers unions are dumping boatloads of cash into the effort to repeal education reforms adopted in Idaho in 2011, vastly outspending those defending the student-centered changes.

Through September, about 97 percent of the $1.06 million in political funding for the Vote No on Proposition 1, 2, 3 campaign came from the National Education Association and Idaho Education Association unions, the Idaho Statesman reports.

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Idaho’s 2011 education reforms place logical limits on union collective bargaining, award bonuses to top teachers, and leverage technology like laptops and cyber schooling to boost academics for high-schoolers.

The reforms may be good for students, but they’re bad for unions that want to suck every dollar out of public school budgets that they possibly can.

Union leaders know it will take a lot of money to turn voters against the school reforms, and they’re willing to spend it.

“We knew they were spending a lot of money, but we didn’t know how much. There’s no way we can match that, but we are going to enter the fight,” Frank VanderSloot, a prominent Idaho businessman and education reformer, told the Statesman.

“When somebody puts up a million bucks to say ‘no,’ I think it’s pretty normal to fall behind,” he said.

But money isn’t everything. Idaho’s voters have shown in the past that they have no problem rejecting union special interests to do what’s right.

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“In 1986, unions spent $2.8 million in a failed effort to overturn Idaho’s right to work law,” according to the Statesman. “Proponents spent less than half that, $1.2 million, but won with 54 percent of the vote.”