Idaho’s West Bonner County School District is tightening its belt and passing the hat to keep providing as many services as possible to students after repeated funding levy failures.
The district is trying to raise over a million dollars in donations in the next month.
So how did West Bonner County’s budget get to this point? One of its funding streams seems to have dried up, Dean Davis, district finance director, said.
“So there was a levy in 2023. That did not pass," Davis said. "And then we ran another levy May of [2024] fairly recently and that was for $4.6 million, and that levy did not pass.”
Those levies were attempted largely because of the end of COVID-era relief money from the federal government.
According to Davis, West Bonner County's federal funding is "down about $2.8 million year over year.”
Idaho districts get their money from the federal government, the state, and local taxes.
“So, we don't have local taxes; the levy failed. The federal government — that funding has gone down primarily due to COVID," Davis said. "So we rely almost exclusively on the state.”
And in Idaho, that’s not a lot of money. According to the US Census Bureau, in 2022, Idaho spent about $9,600 per student, placing it at 49th in the nation, just barely ahead of Utah, which spent about $9,500 per student.
In that same year, Washington spent more than $17,000 per student, and Montana spent about $13,500 per student.
So for West Bonner County, relying on state dollars alone makes it hard to balance a budget.
But why would a community reject a levy if they know their school district is struggling?
There are a number of reasons, according to Kristina Kenny, who's the district’s Special Education director and leader of the district’s fundraising and grants committee.
A lot of people in the area live on fixed incomes, she said.
“It's really hard to pay into a levy when they only get so much money each month, and adding anything extra to their tax bill is just not feasible,” Kenny said.
Another factor might be different ideologies, suggested Washington State Associate History Professor Lawrence Hatter.
"The sort of philosophical underpinning of this is the idea that an individual knows how to spend their money — that 'I know how to spend my money better than the government does.'"
There’s also been a growing sentiment, especially on the right, Hatter said, that public education isn’t necessarily to be trusted.
"There is this sense that education is being used as kind of a tool by, you know, ‘liberal elites,’ if you will, to try to promote their particular political agenda concerning all kinds of things," he said.
For Kenny, why the levy failed isn’t the important question right now. She’s got money to raise, and she needs help from all of her community members to do it.
She's been trying to marshal the community together, including hearing from people who haven't voted for the levies in the past.
"That's been interesting to hear from some of the voters who don't support levies, is knowing why they're not supporting them, understanding and respecting that," she said, "but then also being able to come and walk alongside them and allow them to support in another way."
The district’s goal is to raise $1,073,000, and district finance director Dean Davis is hopeful they can do it.
"Members of the community say to me 'Okay the levy failed. So I'm going to go home, and I'm going to calculate what I would have paid in taxes had the levy passed. And I'm going to donate that to the school,'" he said.
The district had been forced to close its middle school, Priest River Junior High, and not replace out-going teachers to balance its budget. With the donations, Kenny and Davis said the district will be able to pay for things like hiring more full-time teachers to replace the ones who’ve left, an updated English curriculum, and a school resource officer.
And even if they don’t hit their goal, the district has a plan, Kenny said. Each of the items listed on their fundraising flyer is listed in roughly the order of priority.
"Let's say we only raised $200,000, then we'll be able to take the first two items," she explained. "We'll buy our curriculum, we'll pay for our resource officer, and then the remaining will go towards buses."
Still, she acknowledged the district can’t function like this forever.
"I love seeing people step up and give their part and do what they can," Kenny said. "But I am not sure if it's a sustainable practice."
It’s important to keep in mind who’s really affected most by a lack of education funding, WSU's Lawrence Hatter said.
"It's tragic, because who suffers? It's the children," he said. "And obviously, the teachers have a tough time of it.
"But if the children don't have the resources, and access, it's just not going to help them."
For more information about the fundraising efforts and spending priorities, you can visit the school district’s website or their fundraising page on the Innovia Foundation's website. Kenny said West Bonner County School District hope to raise the money by the end of August but with a deadline of October at the latest.
