In the month since the 2025 Idaho legislature adjourned for the year, Gem State conservatives have had much to celebrate as the state’s electoral shift to the right in 2024 bore fruit in the form of some impressive policy victories.

But not everyone is pleased.

“The 2025 session of the Idaho Legislature is without a doubt the worst legislative session for public education in recent memory — if not in the history of our state,” said Layne McInelly, president of the Idaho Education Association (IEA), following the legislature’s adjournment.

In articles published on the IEA’s website since April, the teachers union has described the 2025 session as “dismal” and “devastating.” It has specifically denounced conservative lawmakers as “bad,” “destructive,” “radical,” “hardline,” “out of control” and “power hungry,” while assailing the legislation they supported as ranging from “frivolous to punishing.”  

As the Freedom Foundation reported in late March, the IEA plans to “expel” what it calls the “infestation of radical lawmakers” in Boise with a campaign to replace actual conservative Republicans with progressives running as Republicans in the May 2026 GOP primary elections.

According to the IEA, the “central focus” of its so-called “May Matters” campaign will be “[m]obilizing IEA members to turn out voters in the May 2026 primary elections and return a pro-public education majority to the Idaho Legislature.”

Part of the union’s strategy involves getting Democratic and independent teachers to make some “pragmatic political calculations” and “re-register” as Republicans “in strategic districts” so they can vote for the most liberal candidates running under false colors in the GOP primary.

Such rhetorical fire-breathing and political scheming is par for the course when it comes to teachers unions. More notable, however, was the IEA’s claim that “allies” like the Idaho School Boards Association (ISBA) “will join” the union’s May Matters effort.

It would be conspicuously indecorous for an association of elected school directors, representing the voters of Idaho, to signal approval for such bombastic attacks on elected state legislators and to engage in overt efforts to defeat them electorally.

It was little surprise, then, that the ISBA distanced itself from the IEA’s statements when asked by the Freedom Foundation about its claimed partnership with the union.

Responding to the Freedom Foundation’s inquiry, Quinn Perry, the ISBA’s government affairs director, wrote that “ISBA does not and will not participate in any electoral campaign (with IEA or anyone) and does not run platforms or practices that would seat – or unseat – any political candidates.” She further indicated that she would ask the IEA to “remove mention of us from their May Matters information.”

The article on IEA’s website was subsequently edited to remove the reference to the ISBA.

Still, it’s not hard to see how the IEA might have been confused about the ISBA’s position.

Just last month, the IEA awarded Perry its “Champion of Education” award. In her acceptance speech at the IEA’s Delegate Assembly, Perry praised the IEA as “great partners” in “navigating the political ridiculousness” in the legislature, stated that, “There are many of us who are going to shift our attention to local communities [so] that we elect… a more pro-public education legislature,” and called on attendees to “please join us as we go into communities at the most basic, grassroots level to create that shift…”

Regardless of whatever specific actions the ISBA or the IEA take in electoral or other terms, the episode reinforces the need for one of the most consequential items of unfinished business from the 2025 legislature — ending taxpayer support for teachers unions.

While legislation addressing the various ways in which the IEA benefits from government support was introduced by Rep. Judy Boyle (R-Midvale) and Sen. Ben Toews (R-Coeur d’Alene) and passed by the House, Sen. Jim Guthrie (R-McCammon) refused to schedule HB 98 for a hearing in the Senate State Affairs Committee.

Consequently, as the IEA plots its hostile takeover of the Idaho GOP primaries next year, its influence and resources remain artificially enhanced at taxpayer expense through practices like school districts’ deduction of union dues from teachers’ paychecks, paid-time-off specifically for union activism and special access to teachers and school facilities for recruitment and other purposes.

Government union reform may not sound as exciting as culture war flashpoints, but it’s always better to address root causes than playing whack-a-mole with symptoms. Ending taxpayer support for teachers unions would be a long-term, strategic victory that should top every conservative’s priority list for the 2026 Idaho legislature.