May 20 is the next election day in Idaho, and five school districts in the northernmost part of the panhandle are asking voters to approve levies that would do everything from pay for school buses to keeping the doors of a school open.
The West Bonner, Lakeland, Boundary County, Post Falls and Plummer/Worley School Districts all have funding asks out to their voters.
In Post Falls, voters will consider a $11.9 million, two-year levy to continue their tax that's already on the books, while for residents in the Plummer/Worley District, residents will vote on a $1.8 million, two-year levy.
The majority of the Plummer/Worley's levy funds would go to staffing expenses at $451,800 a year. The levy would also pay for athletic personnel and transportation, a school resource officer and student technology. If passed, it would cost taxpayers $43.82 per $100,000 of assessed value, before state property tax relief.
The Post Falls levy would cost taxpayers about $61.35 per $100,000 of assessed property value, if passed. However, that rate would drop to $44.69 with state property tax relief funds.
All five districts are running supplemental levies, which only need a simple majority to pass.
SPR’s Owen Henderson spoke with Emma Epperly of Idaho Ed News, who’s been following the ballot measures and what passage — and failure — would mean for the students and districts.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
OWEN HENDERSON: Emma Epperly covers North Idaho for Idaho Education News. Emma, thanks for being here.
EMMA EPPERLY: Thanks for having me.
OH: Let's start with the West Bonner District. This is a place that's had more than one failed ballot measure recently, and they already closed one of their schools last year. Tell me about what West Bonner is putting on the ballot.
EE: They are putting a $4.7 million two-year levy on the ballot, and they've had a really difficult few years. They’ve had [a] rotating door of superintendents. They've struggled to get their budget in order, and this levy is hopefully for the trustees and the current superintendent putting an end to all of that.
They are catching up on their audits, and they're hoping to have their budget totally sorted out so that this levy can really be used for keeping schools open. Otherwise, they are most likely going to have to close two of their elementary schools, so that would leave them with just one elementary school and then a junior-senior high school.
OH: And what's that going to mean for students and parents, even for something as simple as the commute of families trying to get their kids to school in a fairly large district?
EE: A lot of North Idaho districts, especially the rural ones, are pretty large. This could leave kids with a significant bus ride to school. Some kids might just opt to be homeschooled, an online school, or go to a nearby school district.
Those shifts as students leave would take even more money away from West Bonner and make things even more difficult for the remaining students.
And so that's kind of a big concern among the school district. They're in talks to start their own online school, which appears to be a way to retain students with those long bus rides so they could do school from home with parental supervision.
So they don't have a total plan figured out, but it would be really difficult for a lot of these students, especially little kids, on long bus rides.
OH: So further north, the Boundary County district has another high-stakes levy. What is the district asking for?
EE: Boundary County, which is the northernmost school district in Idaho, has really struggled to pass levies for a long time. Traditionally, they'll run a levy in November, it will fail, and then it will pass in May.
They've also really struggled to pass bonds, which are used to build new buildings. They had a $10 million bond fail in November that would have replaced Valley View Elementary, which is just in a terrible state up there. And so they've really struggled with this for years.
This current supplemental levy they have in the ballot is a $4.8 million levy spread over two years. It would largely pay for school staff. The rest of the money would go to extracurricular activities, safety, security, and maintenance, along with buying a new school bus.
The district buses students over 700 miles a day. Boundary County Superintendent Jan Baer said that for every four school days, it equates to one teacher's salary because of how far they have to bus their students. So that's a huge part of their budget.
It would be really difficult for them if the levy didn't pass. Their superintendent has talked quite a bit about their struggle to pay for special education services, which is mandated by the state and federal government. She said, you know, if we were funded, if we got more funding for these special education services, we wouldn't need to have this big of a levy.
OH: And how about the Lakeland District in Rathdrum and Athol? As I understand it, school officials have been doing a lot of presentations about the levy in the last few months.
EE: Lakeland is in a really difficult situation. They had a levy fail two years ago, and then at the next election, it passed. And now they're in the same situation again this year.
Their levy failed in November, and then trustees reduced their levy ask by $2 million. And so now they're running about a $15 million two-year levy.
Their superintendent, Lisa Arnold, has been giving just a ton of presentations, holding town halls. The community out there is doing a lot of work to educate people about the levy and get it passed.
So if the levy fails, the district would lose 25 teaching positions. The co-curricular and athletic activities would go to a pay-to-play model. They would lose music, PE, and STEAM courses in the elementary schools, safety and security programs, advanced learning programs in the elementary school, library personnel, and access to the Kootenai Technical Education Campus, or KTEC.
Even with the levy passing, the district is going to lose 25 staff members because of that $2 million difference between their November ask and their ask in May.
OH: So these levies are couched as “supplemental,” but a lot of the consequences you're describing to me are losing staff, cutting programs that seem integral to students' experience. How are people in these districts trying to get residents to vote yes?
EE: A lot of superintendents are calling these levies fundamental to their constituents. We're talking about North Idaho here, and I want to point back to a story I wrote in December about North Idaho school districts relying more heavily on local taxpayer dollars than their Southern counterparts.
And a huge thing that I was told that is causing that is competition with Washington. Teachers in North Idaho can go just a few miles over and make way more money. Also, just the distance that North Idaho school districts have to bus their students is a huge cost, and they're reimbursed about 80% from the state for some of those costs.
So those are some of the reasons North Idaho schools say they rely more heavily on levies. But also that special education funding gap has been a huge topic of conversation among superintendents explaining to their constituents, we have less money to pay teachers because we don't have enough money to cover our special education bill.
And then also that funding model, Idaho's funding model, the average daily attendance model, is 31 years old this year, and it just hasn't gotten an update.
Legislators worked on an update this year, but it didn't pass. And then they also say, especially in North Idaho again, there are just a ton of transplants from other states. And the way levies and bonds work in those states is different than how it works in Idaho.
Idaho is 49th or 50th in per pupil spending, which is another thing superintendents bring up frequently. So all of those factors are things that superintendents are talking about right now as they try to get their levies passed.
OH: Emma Epperly covers North Idaho for Idaho Education News. Emma, thanks for sharing your reporting.
EE: Thank you.
