Fox Can’t Find Architects For Generic Schools

State Schools Superintendent Anne Fox is having a tough time keeping one of her primary campaign promises because she cannot find an architect willing to help draw generic school plans.

The Department of Education has advertised twice for the job, which pays between $41,000 and $45,000 a year, depending on experience. It has little support from the Legislature, education circles or industry.

Fox believes generic school plans will save money because Idaho districts will not have to reinvent each new school they build. But the Legislature last winter refused to appropriate $745,000 she requested to create 12 stock plans.

“We’ve learned each site is different and you don’t save very much with stock plans and you lose an element of local control,” said Ron Black, chairman of the House Education Committee.

Black said he tried to convince Fox of that, but has since “stopped talking to her about it.”

And House Appropriations Chairman Kathleen Gurnsey, R-Boise, left no doubt about her feelings when she was contacted by a potential applicant for the job.

“One of the candidates who wanted the job, and wanted to know if the job was going to last, called me,” Gurnsey said. “I told him that if I had a good job I probably wouldn’t quit it to take this one.”

When Fox did not get what she needed from the Legislature, she reshuffled some positions within the department to free up the money for an architect.

She hired and then fired a person for that job in February after learning he was a furniture salesman who had misrepresented his architectural experience.

The department has extended the application deadline once and even sent a letter to 387 licensed Idaho architects last month asking them to “please pass the word” to interested colleagues.

But the department did not send the notice to the executive director of the Idaho chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

Connie Searles said she did not know about the opening even though matching architects with jobs is part of her responsibilities.