Woodward, Critchfield talk to constituents at town hall

Event focused heavily on education, budgets

By Ben Olson
Reader Staff

More than 100 people attended the third and final District 1 town hall gathering March 28 at Sandpoint Community Hall, hosted by Sen. Jim Woodward, R-Sagle and Rep. Mark Sauter, R-Sandpoint. Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction Debbie Critchfield took the stage alongside Woodward; however, Sauter was absent due to attending a funeral.

Fellow Dist. Rep. Cornel Rasor, R-Sagle, was again absent, missing all three Sandpoint town halls held this primary season.

Woodward, Sauter, Rasor and Critchfield are all running for reelection.

“Friday was the 75th day of the 2026 legislative session … and we’ve had some successes, and we’ve had a few pieces of legislation that we would have really liked to have seen go through that didn’t quite make it,” stated Woodward.

He further spoke on House Bill 561 — a bill that calls for fines against local and state governments for flying flags that aren’t on the Legislature’s pre-approved list — saying he attempted to amend the bill to allow cities such as Bonners Ferry to continue to fly the Canadian flag, as they have for many decades. 

“We didn’t get it, so then it had to get a little bit uglier and we did manage to get that bill to the amending order from the floor,” stated Woodward. “The shocking part about this is that while in the Senate State Affairs [Committee] … Scott Herndon, was at the same time, texting members of that committee, telling them that it was ‘Just fine’ — that Bonners Ferry could lease that ground to the chamber of commerce, and the chamber could fly that flag. Now, do you see the hypocrisy in that, when you think of the Festival [at Sandpoint]?”

Herndon was at the forefront of a yearslong lawsuit against the city of Sandpoint, which had leased War Memorial Field to the Festival at Sandpoint. Herndon argued that the Festival could not ban weapons at its summer concerts under the lease agreement. The courts ruled against Herndon, and the lawsuit ultimately failed before he could appeal the Idaho Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the ruling. At the same time, Bonner County filed a similar lawsuit against the City of Sandpoint, which Kootenai County District Judge Lansing L. Haynes ultimately ruled was “speculative” and lacked the standing to bring the case before the court. Both lawsuits cost area taxpayers more than $300,000.

“That’s speaking out of both sides of the mouth,” said Woodward. “We won on that, and we’ll continue to push for doing the right thing for public policy in the state of Idaho.”

Critchfield — who introduced herself as an Idaho resident of 35 years — began by discussing her educational background. Beginning as a parent volunteer at her children’s schools, she served for 10 years on a local school board before moving to the Idaho State Board of Education and, in 2022, winning the race for Idaho Superintendent of Public Instruction against Brandon Durst. She is currently running for re-election and will face Democrat Becky Sundin Mitchell and Constitutionalist Teresa Roundy in the general election. 

Critchfield spoke of her early interest in boosting literacy rates in Idaho schools.

“The literacy efforts that our state had been involved with had stalled a little bit in my view,” she said — a reduction that she believes the state caused by straying from a phonics-based curriculum.

“We’ve got the highest reading levels in our K-3 readers that we’ve had since 2007,” she said. “My focus has really been about getting back to basics.”

Critchfield has also pushed for schools to continue to teach cursive, claiming that, according to teacher feedback, cursive instruction has improved literacy and even helped students with dyslexia.

Next, she highlighted her advocacy for career technical education and vocational training, citing the expansion and creation of 170 new programs statewide. She further championed financial literacy classes, claiming that “60,000 students” have now graduated from Idaho high schools having taken a personal management or finance course.

Critchfield called 2026 a “challenging year” for Idaho schools due to recent budget constraints.

“My goal was to put as much of a barbed wire, electric fence around the public schools’ budget as we could,” she said. “That we will be able to at least maintain the budget that we had last year was a win for us this year.”

When asked by a member of the public how the Trump administration’s downsizing and restructuring efforts in the Department of Education have affected her job, Critchfield stated, “I hope this won’t disappoint you, but I’ve also been a proponent of the dismantling.

“Our state has their fingers in too many things at the local level and so does the federal government,” she added.

In her opinion, dismantling the Department of Education should be a “model for what needs to happen at the state level,” as it eliminates bureaucracy and allows for local decision-making.

Over the course of the town hall, Critchfield also addressed issues like remote learning; H.B. 93, which provides tax credits for students attending private, charter and religious schools; and the impending closure of the Lake Pend Oreille High School building. Listen to a recording of the full town hall event at krfy.org/podcast.