Voters in north Idaho approved most of the school levies on Tuesday’s ballot, a few by narrow margins.
Two have apparently fallen short. The West Bonner County School District measure has about 46% approval. The Post Falls levy is 33 votes behind out of 2,900 ballots cast.
There are also tight margins in the Boundary County and Lakeland School Districts, but with the opposite result. In Post Falls, Superintendent Dena Naccarato issued a statement expressing disappointment with such a close loss.
"The school district has enjoyed overwhelming community support for many years, and we wonder if some of our supporters took the success for granted and did not get to the polls. The levy is fundamental not supplemental, so we owe it to our students to try again in May," she wrote. "The money is used to maintain student instructional and extracurricular programming. In addition, we need to remain competitive with our surrounding school districts if we hope to retain our hardworking, dedicated teachers and support staff."
The Boundary County measure picked up about 51% approval. At Lakeland, Superintendent Becky Meyer says the levy is about 50 votes ahead with more than 5,300 ballots returned.
“The reason that the percentage of 'yes' votes is down is we have new people and a real organized coalition that is, whether it’s anti-tax, we just want to vote no and have lower property taxes and they aren’t really researching the specifics about our school district," Meyer said.
In Coeur d’Alene School District, voters gave nearly 60% approval to a two-year, $40 million levy.
The Kootenai School District levy in southern Kootenai and northern Benewah Counties has passed. The St. Maries levy won by a strong margin, nearly two-to-one.
In Latah County, all four levies on the ballot have won: Potlatch, Kendrick, Troy and Genesee.