Today's headlines:
- A number of North Idaho school levies passed last week. One in Moscow, Idaho, will turn the district’s middle school into a high school.
- A Spokane philanthropist has donated several paintings from his personal collection, with proceeds going to Spokane Complex Fire recovery efforts.
- We wish Spokane’s own Carla Peperzak a happy 103rd birthday. Last week, the Holocaust survivor and speaker visited her namesake middle school to celebrate.
________________________________________________
Voters in Coeur d’Alene, Post Falls and St. Maries approved maintenance and operations school levies last week. Similar measures failed in the Boundary County, Kootenai and Plummer-Worley districts.
The Moscow School District is celebrating the passage of a levy that will eventually convert its middle school into a high school. SPR’s Doug Nadvornick reports.
Moscow High School was built in 1939. Superintendent Shawn Tiegs says it is inadequate, especially for athletics.
SHAWN TIEGS: “For years, the high school has been coming over to the middle school for football games, track meets, basketball and volleyball.”
The cost of a new high school would be prohibitively expensive, so the district plans to fully renovate its 67-year-old middle school and turn it into Moscow High School.
The district asked voters to tax themselves about $65 million, more than $9 million a year for seven years. Sixty-two percent said yes.
This is not like a bond issue, where the district borrows money and pays it back over a long period of time. In that case, it gets all the money up front and can build as quickly as it wants. That would have required a two-thirds majority. This levy only required a simple majority. But it also means the district gets its money a little bit at a time.
ST: “We might be able to be done in about five and a half years. We have to wait for money to come in, so we'll have to phase some of the construction.”
Tiegs says this type of creative thinking is becoming the norm for Idaho school districts, because bond issues have become next to impossible to pass.
I’m Doug Nadvornick, reporting.
________________________________________________
A Spokane philanthropist has donated several paintings from his personal collection, with proceeds going to Spokane Complex Fire recovery efforts. SPR’s Ember Braun was at the Northwest Museum of Arts and Culture (MAC) last Friday when the paintings were unveiled.
Three of philanthropist Dave Clack’s four paintings have already sold.
Clack says his children encouraged him to donate the art after his wife, Mari Clack, died in 2025.
DAVE CLACK: “So I’ve done a lot of housekeeping and housecleaning. And then we got to the art and I said, ‘Well, the art is really yours.’ And they said, ‘Well, we both live in small, empty nester homes now and we don’t have the wall space. So I think that you ought to figure out a way to contribute that art in some form.’”
More than $7,500 have already been raised and are going to Spokane Neighborhood Action Partners (SNAP). The nonprofit will use those funds to help families during the rebuilding process.
Spokane Mayor Lisa Brown drew back the curtains on the artwork with Clack’s help.
BROWN: “Art is a way for people to experience emotions and realities that we can’t always put into words. And so it seems very appropriate to me that we are taking this art that has been created and utilizing it in this way that will mean so much as we go forward on this journey, this long road.”
The price on the last painting is $8,000. You can see it for free at the MAC during regular business hours.
I’m Ember Braun, reporting.
________________________________________________
Of the three statewide measures on Washington’s ballot last week, only one appears to have passed: Initiative 638. It would ban transgender athletes from competing in girls’ sports.
Dori Whitford coaches girls’ high school track and cross country in Spokane. She’s relieved to see the measure passing.
DORI WHITFORD: “Yeah, I'm extremely excited. I mean, we should be able to rest assured that it will be girls on the start line only.”
To comply with I-638, female athletes would have to submit documentation verifying their biological sex.
Luis Manriquez is the director of community health equity at WSU’s Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine. He’s disappointed that I-638 will most likely be law, but says his focus now is on minimizing harm.
LUIS MANRIQUEZ: “It’s not very prescriptive. And so the extent to which that is interpreted will determine how onerous the bill actually winds up being for women, for girls’ sports.”
It’s not exactly clear how athletes will be required to prove their sex. Manriquez hopes documents from existing well-child visits will be enough.
________________________________________________
A federal judge ruled last week that the Justice Department can ask Washington to set aside ballots, but can’t demand that the state do so.
The ruling is the latest chapter in a saga that began Monday, October 26. That’s when the Justice Department urged Washington Secretary of State Steve Hobbs to deny ballots from 400 people identified as “noncitizens.”
Hobbs refused, saying the list was unreliable.
In last week’s ruling, US District Court Judge Jamal Whitehead says the federal government “kept up the pressure.” His temporary restraining order now prevents the feds from demanding that Washington remove specific voters from voter rolls or deny their ballots. It also protects state election officials from threats of prosecution.
The order lasts for two weeks. Whitehead will hear arguments on November 18.
________________________________________________
Kootenai County voters say they want to change the way public transit is managed. Last week, 57% of voters said no to an advisory question asking whether the county should continue to oversee the Citylink bus system.
Commissioner Leslie Duncan thinks the question lacked crucial context.
LESLIE DUNCAN: “Well the option, if the board of commissioners doesn't do it, [is] that the cities form a joint powers agreement, which is problematic because now you're growing government, you will have a bunch of appointed officials running the system.”
Duncan wants the elected board of commissioners to retain control. Her fellow commissioner, Bruce Mattare, pushed to get the question on the ballot.
BRUCE MATTARE: “Well, I think it’s something that’s important, that even cities recognize that county residents, in the majority ... would prefer that the county not be the primary manager of such a system.”
Mattare says Citylink should be run via a joint powers agreement.
The advisory question is nonbinding. It does not legally compel a decision by the commissioners.
________________________________________________
Holocaust survivor Carla Peperzak celebrated her 103rd birthday on Friday in the Spokane school that bears her name. SPR’s Lisa Leinberger was there.
Carla Peperzak was born in Amsterdam on November 7, 1923. When the Nazis invaded, she joined the Dutch resistance. She grew up in a Jewish family, but her father was able to have the “J” on her identification papers removed. She forged documents. She disguised herself as a German nurse to take a young cousin off of a train headed to Westerbrook, a Nazi transit camp in the Netherlands.
Three years ago, Carla Olman Peperzak Middle School opened in Spokane.
Principal Andre Wick told his students Friday that the school’s namesake had a wish this year.
ANDRE WICK: Work hard and be kind. Those are our two school rules, and they’re words and values that have been with Carla for 103 years.
The students of the school had gathered to celebrate Peperzak’s 103rd birthday with her. She was able to attend and was joined by her three daughters, Marian Cummings, Joan Conner and Yvonne Peperzak-Blake.
Originally, her daughters didn’t think Peperzak was going to be able to come to the celebration. Conner said she had taken a fall a couple of days ago.
JOAN CONNER: "And then I asked her — there was a possibility of a birthday party tonight. And I said, 'Mom, if you can only do one thing, the school or the birthday party — ?' She said, no hesitation, 'The school.' The school is really important to her."
She’s also important to the students. Last year, they wrote and designed a graphic novel based on a documentary of her life, “Carla the Rescuer.”
Addison George is a seventh grader at the middle school who worked on the graphic novel.
ADDISON GEORGE: "She inspires me because she was so courageous and brave and just, like, all of these amazing characteristics."
Anna Vancil worked on the project, too.
ANNA VANCIL: "I think, like, I’m having a hard moment in school or I’m having trouble figuring something out. I’m like, I kind of think back to Carla. I’m like, well, this is not nearly as bad as what she has survived. So I’m like, I can definitely survive this."
After the brief ceremony in the school commons, Peperzak and her daughters had a chance to look at the Anne Frank sapling that was planted on the school grounds. Peperzak grew up around the block from where the Franks lived and went to school with Margot Frank, Anne’s older sister.
When her children were growing up, Peperzak never talked about those years during World War II. Her daughters talked about moments when they knew something scary happened to her, but had never known what it was.
But Carla changed her mind about sharing her story 20 years ago.
CARLA PEPERZAK: "When I moved here, there was a girl by the name of Eva Lassman. And she had been in camp, and she had been talking in different schools about the Holocaust. So, I went with her one time, but then she passed away and they contacted me ... And then I realized how important it is to talk about it. People should know. That changed my whole outlook."
Peperzak’s past will never leave her.
Here’s Conner and her mother.
JC: "I remember one of the talks that you had in Florida, and one of the kids asked you, 'So how did it affect you?' or something. And I don’t remember the exact question, but your answer was — and you started almost crying there — ‘I lost all my family.’ You lost so many family members."
CP: "Yeah. Yeah. It still affects me."
Wick says that as long as he is the principal at Peperzak Middle School, they will celebrate Carla’s birthday. He imagines that it will be somewhat of a holiday at the school, much like President’s Day or MLK Day. It will be Carla Peperzak Day, probably every year.
I’m Lisa Leinberger, reporting.
________________________________________________
SPR News Today is a production of Spokane Public Radio.
Reporting today was contributed by Doug Nadvornick, Ember Braun, Lisa Leinberger and Audrey Nelson, today's host and producer.
Web support is provided by Anna Gyure Havlek.
