OLYMPIA – Faced with a rapidly growing number of requests for public records, the Spokane School District wants to charge the public for the cost of locating and preparing those records.

Mark Anderson, associate superintendent, said District 81 wants to pass on the “reasonable costs” of complying with public records requests, which have tripled over the last three years and now cost the district an estimated $70,000 a year.

A bill that would allow districts all over the state to do that received a brief hearing this week in the Senate budget committee, but in a fashion that has some government watchdogs criticizing the process. Senate Bill 6576 is probably dead; the issue, however, is still alive. . .

To read the rest of t his item, or to comment, click here to go inside the blog

Rocky Treppiedi kept his District 81 School Board seat on the strength of his vote margins in the south and northwest parts of the district, which extends outside the city limits. Laura Carder did well in northeast Spokane, where she’s run previously as a legislative candidate, but those precincts traditionally have fewer voters and smaller turnout than the ones Treppiedi won.

Incumbent Rocky Treppeidi inched a bit farther ahead of challenger Laura Carder in Thursday’s vote count. But there’s still a dramatic north-south split in the votes as shown in the map here.

The Spokane School Board races are too tight to call with any certainty. But a look at the vote patterns shows a definite north-south split in both races.

It’s probably most pronounced in the Position 4 race, where incumbent Rocky Treppiedi has a narrow lead over challenger Laura Carder. Current tally is:

Treppiedi 17,893 (51.64%)
Carder     16,758 (48.36%)

The people supporting the ballot measures for the Spokane School District seem to be intent on proving that the community needs to be spending more money on education. It seems they would not last long on that FOX-TV game show, “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?”

They keep making the mistakes that would earn students in the District 81 classrooms a failing grade.

Campaign yard signs for Spokane School proposed ballot measures say one way the public can “Vote Yes for Kids” on March 10 is to renew a bond issue.

But that’s not quite accurate, even a co-chairwoman of the bond issue campaign concedes. Spokane School District 81 is not renewing  bonds, it’s selling new ones, totaling $288 million, and repaying the new bonds over 20 years.

“It’s not a word choice with an eye on the financial market,” Barb Chamberlain of Citizens for Spokane Schools said.