We must reclaim Idaho's future

Locals may remember that Sandpoint High School used to have a lot of Professional Technical Education programs. When I got to SHS in 2012, however, they were in the process of phasing them out. We had an electronics program and a welding program. Students could get decent paying and stabile blue collar jobs right out of high school, and many of our older siblings did. 

But as more and more liberal coastal backwash, our children have been channeled into educational programs away from local interests and towards a liberal cultural milieu. Now instead of getting a decent job right out of high school, a job that is a lot harder to outsource (eg maintenance or construction), more students are being funneled into a debt trap and an ideological trap called "academia". They have cut the programs that teach useful skills and now funnel students into the liberal arts, entrapping them with debt and condemning them to lower paying service industry jobs. What a convenient coincidence.

If this is not an intentional action against the more conservative working class, it is just a manifestation of the liberal, local upper class' anti-worker instincts. We need to reject liberal thought-channeling and support decent school funding so they stop cutting important technical programs in favor of the neoliberal hippie stuff they're required to teach by law.

Help us reclaim Idaho for the blue collar families who make this state great and build a sustainable future for our young people and blue collar communities by supporting our ballot initiative to fund our schools. A lot of us talk about making/keeping America great. But what are you doing to keep your state and your community great? Get started by defending our young people's right to decent, employment-oriented education.

Register to vote at IdahoVotes.gov and sign the Quality Education Initiative! You'll see us with petitions to qualify for the 2022 elections.

Last round the state decided to use COVID as an excuse to shut us down. Now we're back and stronger than ever. Help us reclaim Idaho for the working families who make this state great. 

DANIEL RADFORD

Sandpoint