Editorial: Competition has helped CdA schools win students

The Coeur d’Alene School District has found that it can reinvigorate its schools by erasing the boundary lines and offering more choices. This has lured more students back into the district’s buildings after years of losing them to a popular charter school and other options.

Other districts, including those in Washington state, should take note that when they see themselves as competing for students, the overall educational landscape is improved.

In Coeur d’Alene it started in 2007, when Sorensen Elementary School became a “magnet” for students wanting to specialize in the arts and humanities. Thus, the Sorensen School for the Arts and Humanities was born and new life was breathed into a tired elementary school. Since then, seven of the district’s 17 schools have instituted specialized offerings and opened enrollment to students no matter where they live.

There are magnets for science, health and arts. There is one to prepare students for international studies in college. Some require uniforms, which attracts parents wishing to avoid fashion drama.

As Coeur d’Alene School District Superintendent Hazel Bauman said in a recent article, “We think that the patrons of our district like choices. A one-size-fits-all focus or curriculum is not really what we know our patrons to want.”

The opening of the Coeur d’Alene Charter Academy has no doubt prodded the innovations within the district. The charter school receives state money but can design its own curriculum. The charter school has become a popular choice and has siphoned off many students.

But since the rise of the magnet schools, the district has been able to draw about 200 more students – and $6,000 a head in state money. This competition among the charter schools, private schools, home-schooling and the revamped district schools has yielded more diverse offerings for students within the district. In addition, voters in three North Idaho districts just approved a levy to build a technical high school on the Rathdrum Prairie, which will cater to students more interested in learning a trade than attending college.

Washington state doesn’t allow charter schools, and voters have turned away efforts to introduce them. However, there are ways to break the mold and offer educational niches for kids who are tuning out their teachers or dropping out of school altogether. But the road to innovation has been much bumpier in Washington, which helps explain why the state received such an embarrassingly low score on its federal Race to the Top application.

Perhaps Washington educators could schedule an across-the-border field trip to figure out ways to compete.