In March, voters in Coeur d'Alene narrowly defeated two ballot measures that would've kept their 18 public schools afloat and funded repairs and maintenance to the school district's buildings.
The defeated $25 million levy, which would've accounted for nearly a quarter of the school district's $89 million operating budget, left school administrators in a bind. Without the new infusion of funds, they said they'd have to cut a quarter of the district's staff, all sports and extracurricular programs, and close four or five schools. Consequently, the district's board of trustees declared a financial state of emergency in April.
In the meantime, school leaders threw the decision back to the voters by placing a $25 million levy on this month's ballot. Unlike the defeated levy, this levy has a two-year sunset on it. (Due to Idaho law, school districts can only run two-year or perpetual levies.)
The current $20 million two-year levy, which expires at the end of the school year, funds the salaries of 157 teachers and staff; 13 principals, assistant principals, and administrators; and 139 of the school district's support staff, which includes nurses, school resource officers, and special education aides.
Shon Hocker, Coeur d'Alene School District's superintendent, says elementary schools and kindergartens would shoulder a majority of these cuts and closures.
"I don't have an option to close a high school and move it into the other high school. We would not be able to function to do that, and the same goes with our middle schools," he says.
If passed, the levy would increase the typical homeowner's taxes about $6 a month. But it isn't this increase that drives opposition to the levy, both supporters and detractors say. Coeur d'Alene has consistently passed school levies for over 30 years.
"After working on levy campaigns for 13 years, this is the first year where there was an organized, well-funded opposition to funding public education," says Chris Meyer, who leads the fundraising campaign for Yes CDA Schools, a group that advocates for the bonds and levies that fund schools in the area.
Brent Regan, chairman of the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee, said in an email that opposition to the levy is focused on administrator pay, and that the budget cuts proposed by the district are wrong-headed.
"The district seems to be focusing on cuts that will have the greatest impact rather than cutting the administrative bloat," he wrote.
Ralph Ginorio, a conservative educator at a charter school in Coeur d'Alene who has written columns for the Kootenai Journal, a website with a "Christian worldview," says the school district should accept the results of the March vote and reassess its budget next election cycle.
"This is just an attempt to game the system and hope that they can pressure more people into going to the polls than went in March," he says. "What public stances the district has taken since the March vote, in my judgment, backs up the claim that they are trying to pack people into stampeding and voting their way."
But Rebecca Smith, chair of the Coeur d'Alene School Board of Trustees, says waiting isn't an option.
"Because our March levy didn't pass, we listened to our community, we got feedback," she says. "To wait to re-ask your community to support it would have a devastating effect on our district."
Hocker says this year school district leaders spent a majority of their time and hundreds of thousands of dollars working on the levy and connecting with voters to inform them of what it funds and why it's important.
"I'm not sure if I know of an educator in my school district that likes to run levies," Hocker says. "We do them because it's a necessity and we have to."
Hocker notes that the school district is one of the largest in the state, yet receives the third-lowest in levy taxes. Still, it ranks among the highest in the state in areas such as test scores and graduation rates.
To Meyer, school levies should be treated like fire and police levies, which are often automatically placed in perpetuity, as he believes they are of equal importance to the community.
"We will have an amazing loss of talent in our educators, we will have an amazing loss of infrastructure in these superb athletic and extracurricular programs we have, and it will take us a decade or more to rebuild," he says. ♦
