Cheney is, geographically, one of the state’s largest school districts.
“We range 381 square miles,” said Superintendent Ben Ferney. “We have the city of Airway Heights. We have the city of Cheney. And then everything else that isn’t in the municipalities, the unincorporated West Plains. We border Spokane Public Schools to our east, Great Northern to the north, Reardan and Medical Lake to our west. We go all the way out to Fishtrap Lake area, south to Rosalia.”
It’s one of the fastest growing areas in Spokane County. With more people, comes more demand for services.
While most Spokane County districts are running one or two ballot measures in February, Cheney has three: an operations levy, a capital levy and a bond issue.
The operations levy will replace an expiring levy that covers needs not paid for by basic education funding from the state, things like athletics and other extracurriculars. Ferney says 49% of the money raised from local property taxes goes for educational programs and support services, such as paraeducators, counselors and advanced placement classes; 25% for special education; 19% for athletics and other extracurricular activities; 6% for student transportation and 1% for school food programs.
Ferney says the school board also decided to run a second levy, a capital levy, to cover other expenses.
“We’re a Chromebook school district, so to replace the Chromebooks. We also look at security upgrades with our cameras and some infrastructure items, potentially, with that,” he said.
Ferney says the district has bigger capital needs as well, so it convened a broad stakeholder group to study those needs for several months. The group decided Cheney needs one more school.
“Our largest elementary right now is Sunset Elementary in Airway Heights. It has over 600 students in that one elementary building and we have some students that live in Airway Heights that go to other schools as well because it’s full,” Ferney said.
“The planning team looked at that and said we need to build a building. We have the land and so that measure is for the bond measure. The main part of our bond is for a building. We’re a growing school district. Our enrollment is increasing, especially in K-5, and so we’re looking to build an elementary school in Airway Heights.”
Ferney says the $72 million bond will also pay to buy more land for future schools and for a centralized transportation facility. It plans to spend $3.5 million for safety and security projects at several schools and $6.75 million for infrastructure improvements at several schools. The bond measure needs a 60% supermajority to pass. The two levies need a simple majority.
You can read more of the specifics at the Cheney school website or in the voters’ pamphlet at the Spokane County website.
