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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Lawmakers: It’s time for schools fix

Betsy Z. Russell Staff writer

BOISE – North Idaho legislators say the Idaho Supreme Court’s school facilities decision this past week means lawmakers must come up with a way to fix Idaho’s deteriorating schoolhouses.

“As uncomfortable as that may make some legislators feel, we can’t pass it on to the judiciary, we can’t pass it on to local folks by suing them or things like that,” said Senate Education Chairman Gary Schroeder, R-Moscow.

Rep. George Eskridge, R-Dover, said, “It’d be nice instead of relying on the court and the appeals and all the rest of it, to make the decision.”

Faced with a court order to change Idaho’s system for funding school construction, lawmakers in 2003 instead passed HB 403. The bill sought to turn the tables in a long-running lawsuit, by turning school districts that sued the state over inadequate funding into defendants in new lawsuits. If the districts didn’t fix their own school-building problems, HB 403 required courts to order no-vote local property tax hikes to get the job done.

The state sued seven school districts before HB 403 was overturned.

Eskridge voted for HB 403, while Schroeder voted against it. In fact, North Idaho lawmakers were deeply divided on the idea, touted by supporters as a way to end the long-running lawsuit and get the worst schools fixed. Opponents, however, said the new law avoided the problem – deteroriating and unsafe schoolhouses in poor districts across the state, and no money to fix them.

Sen. Shawn Keough, R-Sandpoint, said, “Our constitution clearly places the responsibility for a public school system on the Legislature, and we’re shirking our responsibility when it comes to school buildings… . It’s well past time to accept that responsibility and come up with a solution.”

Keough, who opposed HB 403, said she favors looking back to the findings of a special task force assembled by Gov. Dirk Kempthorne and state schools Superintendent Marilyn Howard in 2003 to negotiate a settlement to the lawsuit. The task force recommended millions more in state aid to school districts for school repair, maintenance and construction, in addition to lowering the two-thirds supermajority now required to pass a school bond.

Lawmakers refused to consider the plan, instead passing HB 403.

Rep. George Sayler, D-Coeur d’Alene, agreed with Keough that the task force’s findings should be back on the table. “We have an issue, we have a lawsuit,” Sayler said. “It isn’t going to go away by ignoring it.”

Sayler, a government teacher at Coeur d’Alene High School who opposed HB 403, said, “The law was wrong. It seemed like an attempt to get off the hook… . This just proves again the danger of a supermajority in the Legislature that doesn’t want to really debate and discuss issues, and the need for more balance.”

Eskridge said, “To me, first of all, child safety is paramount. We’ve been fighting this lawsuit for over 10 years. If, in the meantime, we’ve got kids at risk, we’ve got to fix it. That’s why I voted for the bill.”

Eskridge said he doesn’t want the state to take over the costs of school construction, because that would mean a loss of local control for school districts, and could shift state tax funds from rural districts like his to faster-growing, more urban districts that build lots of schools.

But a partnership between the state and school districts could provide more aid to financially strapped districts, he said. Eskridge said he’d favor expansions of state interest-subsidy programs for poor school districts, which was among the task force’s recommendations.

Sen. Dick Compton, R-Coeur d’Alene, said he’d like to see the supermajority re-examined. The required vote to build a school with a bond levy could be lowered from two-thirds to 60 percent, he said, while at the same time limiting school bond levy elections to higher-turnout general and primary election dates.

“It might be a way to strike a compromise,” Compton said. “That shouldn’t make any difference to the districts that are passing them, because they’re getting supermajorities now. But it would make a difference to districts that are having a heck of a time passing them.”

Compton voted for HB 403. But now, he said, “I think reality sets in. We tried this other way of turning the tables on the school districts, the courts said you can’t do that, so we still have the problem. The problem seems to be that some of these districts can’t pass levies. I think this might be a compromise.”

He added, “We can’t continue to go with this sue and re-sue. We’ve got to come up with a compromise we think will work.”

Compton’s Democratic opponent, Ian Stenseng of Post Falls, hailed the court’s decision. “This is the lower courts telling our legislators to fund public schools, this is the higher courts telling our legislators to fund public schools, this is the public telling our legislators to fund public schools. So hopefully our legislators will start to fund public schools.”

But, Stenseng said, “I think that may not happen until we get different legislators.”

Eskridge, who is unopposed for re-election, said he’d even favor dropping the supermajority all the way down to 50 percent plus one, if election dates were moved to the higher-turnout dates. He cited Boundary County, where repeated attempts to pass a bond for a new school fell just short of the two-thirds mark. That district eventually passed a bond after it received a state interest subsidy.

“When you consider a case like Bonners Ferry, where a third of the people can make the decision that the kids don’t have a new and adequate school, I think that’s unreasonable,” Eskridge said. “We elect a president on 50-plus. So why can’t we build a school?”

While the issue languished, Eskridge said, Bonners Ferry middle schoolers suffered with portable classrooms that left them to walk in slippery, icy winter weather from one room to the next. “We have a greater responsibility than that to adequate facilities for our kids,” Eskridge said.

Keough, who has clashed with her own party’s leadership on the school construction issue, said the Supreme Court has made it clear that the HB 403 approach didn’t work, and a 4th District judge has ruled the current funding system, which relies almost entirely on local property taxes, unconstitutional.

“While the Supreme Court hasn’t ruled on that yet, it seems as though to continue to put off a solution and continue to spend money fighting this issue is not prudent,” Keough said.

Now that the Supreme Court has invalidated HB 403, it will take up the state’s appeal of the 4th District judge’s order, which includes numerous technical objections. But the process of hearing that appeal could take six to eight months – which would run into or beyond the next legislative session.

North Idaho lawmakers said the issue shouldn’t be put off again.

“We need to get this settled,” Eskridge said.

Sayler’s Republican challenger, Dan Yake, couldn’t be reached for comment.

Keough’s Democratic challenger, Patty Douglas Palmer, said she hadn’t studied the issue enough to comment. “I wouldn’t want to voice an opinion on something that is sketchy at best to me, at this moment,” she said.

Several other candidates who were asked about the issue as they campaigned at the North Idaho Fair this week gave similar answers. Republicans Marge Chadderdon and Frank Henderson, who are running for House seats in Districts 4 and 5, both said they didn’t know enough about the court decision to comment. Republican Bob Nonini, who is seeking another District 5 House seat, said he favors keeping Idaho’s current system for funding school construction.