School Won’T Be The Same New Year Brings Changes In Buildings, Programs

Shiny patent leather shoes and squeaky clean lunch boxes aren’t the only new things at school this fall.

Districts across North Idaho are unveiling new buildings, new programs and new faces.

In Coeur d’Alene and Spirit Lake, two schools will open their doors to students for the first time.

“It’s kind of exciting,” Coeur d’Alene High School Principal Steve Casey said. New school buildings have been rare in the past several years, but several will open when school starts Wednesday.

Woodland Middle School, a 95,000-square-foot project funded by a $9.5 million levy, will serve more than 700 sixth- through eighth-graders in Coeur d’Alene. The sprawling facility has two gymnasiums, wings for each grade level and a cafeteria that converts into a small auditorium.

In Lakeland School District, the $7.6 million, 106,000-square-foot Timberlake junior-senior high school in Spirit Lake will ease crowding. About 600 seventh- through 12th-graders will attend the new school.

Those students and others in the district will also be the first in Lakeland to get hot lunches.

Cooks in a central kitchen in Rathdrum will prepare 2,000 to 2,500 hundred meals a day that will be taken to Lakeland schools, said Kevin Doyle, who coordinates the district’s food service program.

Secondary school students will be treated to salad bars, an a la carte menu, pizza, sandwiches and hot entrees - at $1.75 for most lunches. Elementary school students can choose from a more limited menu for $1.50, Doyle said.

This year’s class of kindergartners in Post Falls will be the first to try the Waterford Early Childhood Reading Program, a sophisticated curriculum funded by a grant from the J.A. and Kathryn Albertson Foundation.

Through the program, all 15 classrooms at the Frederick Post Kinder Center will get $32,000 worth of computers, books and videos for students.

Each classroom gets three computers and a laser printer, while students will get to take home four videos and 52 books during the school year.

“The earlier we can get things started the better off we are as far as improving reading skills,” Kinder Center Principal Sue Ledbetter said. “That’s what we’re all about.”

Lake City High School in Coeur d’Alene leads the pack in new courses.

The school will offer 26 new electives this year, including Classic Movies as Literature, Anatomy and Physiology, the History of Sports and Entertainment, and Aerobic Fitness and Nutrition.

The unprecedented number of new course offerings is required under the school’s new block scheduling program, in which students take eight classes each semester instead of six.

Block scheduling, a two-year pilot program approved by the school board in March, lengthens each class period from 55 minutes to 88 minutes. Students take one set of four classes each day and an alternate set the next day.

There will be just one new class at Coeur d’Alene High School this fall, Advanced Placement Senior English. But there will also be a host of new teachers and other staff members, Principal Steve Casey said.

“It’s a little more turnover than normal,” Casey said.

Construction crews at the high school will tear down the old press box and begin some preliminary renovations on the school, Casey said. The remodeling project is funded by a $19.81 million levy approved by voters last May.

A school levy is also on the mind of Roy Rummler, superintendent of Bonner County schools.

The district will ask voters to approve a $1.38 million levy Tuesday. The money would fund more teachers, buses and class materials.

A new logo that stresses the success of each child will also be inaugurated in Bonner County this year, Rummler said.

“Everybody is stepping forward to get Bonner County schools moving in a positive, upbeat manner,” he said.