$17.6 million levy
Coeur d’Alene voters will decide May 15 whether to give $17.6 million to the school district over the next two years to increase staffing and to maintain programs, such as those for high achievers and struggling students, funded by past levies.
The $17.6 million levy approved by the Coeur d’Alene School Board at its meeting Tuesday evening is $3 million more than the one it replaces. The additional funds would maintain and upgrade technology, pay for staff training and hire more teachers to reduce class size, among other things.
The levy would cost the owner of a $200,000 home $206 each year, about $25 more than the current one costs.
School board vice chairwoman Edie Brooks noted the difference “comes out to be a latté a month.
“I would feel very good about giving up one latté a month to provide those additional monies for the school district, and I hope everyone feels the same,” she said.
The levy requires more than 50 percent approval to pass.
If the levy is approved, even with the increased amount, property taxpayers would still be giving less property tax money to the school district than in past years. That’s because the Legislature moved school funding off property taxes last year and onto an increased sales tax, and because the last four-year school construction levy passed by the district expired this year, and voters rejected its replacement.
The $17.6 million covers everything funded by the expiring $14.6 million levy, such as the advanced learning program and all-day kindergarten for kids who need it, and adds an additional $3 million. The extra funds go to six areas: technology, the advanced learning program, more staffing to reduce class size, staff training, additional administrative positions at high-enrollment elementary schools and inflationary costs for the programs currently funded.
“Every single thing that’s in this levy is absolutely essential and necessary,” said Assistant Superintendent Hazel Bauman. Though there’s many more things for which the district would like funding, the levy amount is a good balance between the needs of the district and the willingness of voters to pay more property taxes, she said.
The largest chunk of the additional funds – about $822,000 – goes to technology. The last school construction levy funded technology upgrades and maintenance in the district for the last four years, but there’s no current construction levy in place to continue that funding. The money allotted in the proposed levy would go to maintaining the investments made over the last four years.
About $720,000 would go to salaries for six new teachers.
“Class size over the last five years has continued to grow,” Superintendent Harry Amend said. “This is the beginning of an effort to try to address that.”
Along with the funding already covered by the current levy, the advanced learning program at the elementary schools would get an additional $294,000 to hire more coordinators. The program currently has one coordinator at each elementary school, regardless of enrollment. Coordinators at small schools like Winton can reach more students than coordinators at big schools like Skyway. The additional money would put more coordinators at the larger schools.
Training opportunities for staff would get $500,000. The district hasn’t paid for additional training and development opportunities for staff in a few years, and Bauman said that’s reflected in student test scores, which have stayed relatively flat during that time.
Lastly, $270,000 would be set aside for part-time vice principal positions at two high-enrollment elementary schools, and $438,000 is earmarked to cover inflationary costs for other programs.
Though two-year supplemental levies like the one proposed have been a routine part of the school district budget since 1986, the process for setting the amount of this one and what it will fund was anything but standard. For the first time, a survey was made available to the community, asking which programs should be funded by the levy and which shouldn’t, and a workshop was held so community members could discuss possible levy amounts and other issues.
The extra efforts stemmed from the rejection of the $40 million school construction levy last March. The vote on that levy, as well as votes on past maintenance and operation levies, shows signs of faltering support in Coeur d’Alene for school tax levies. Levies in 2001 and 2003 passed with more than 70 percent approval, but the expiring levy that the proposed one is to replace squeaked by in 2005 with slightly less than 55 percent of the vote.
After the building construction levy failed to get even a majority of the vote – it needed 55 percent of the vote to pass and got just 45 percent – a committee formed to see what could be done to bolster community support. The two main suggestions were getting more input from the community on what the levy should fund and, once the levy amount has been decided, making it clearer to the public what the money would fund.
District officials met last week to discuss strategies for publicizing the levy.