Whitepine Considers District Split Action Would Separate Troy From Deary, Bovill, Elk River

One week after Bonner County residents voted to split their troubled school district, trustees in the Whitepine School District are considering doing the same thing.

The split, which is only in the early stages of discussion, would separate Troy from Deary, Bovill and Elk River.

“It’s just like two neighbors that can’t get along,” Brad Dorendorf, vice chairman of the Whitepine School Board, said Monday. “When you’ve got two kids that can’t get along, you just separate them.”

Four schools, including two high schools, serve about 680 students in the bedroom communities outside of Moscow.

Discussions about splitting the district surfaced early this month after a $7.2 million bond that would have consolidated the high schools failed.

At issue is the 93-year-old Troy Junior-Senior High School, a dilapidated building that houses about 150 students. Electrical wiring at the school is substandard, there is no access for disabled people, and the girls’ locker room is adjacent to the boiler room, Principal Conrad Underdahl said.

“If a fire were to start there, they wouldn’t get out,” Underdahl said.

A 1992 estimate said it would take $2.1 million to address all of the school’s safety issues.

Underdahl presented a letter to Whitepine trustees for consideration at Monday’s regular board meeting. In it, he said administrators at Troy Junior-Senior High School need to know how the facility concerns will be addressed so they can budget accordingly.

The Whitepine School District is among many around Idaho involved in a Supreme Court case against the state. The schools allege that the state is responsible for providing adequate school buildings.

“There’s a history of 60 years of these arguments,” Underdahl said. “We’re probably to a point where we have to address them.”

Ron Proctor, a Deary parent, supports the split. Two school boards would solve the tension that arises between trustees representing different communities, Proctor said.

“It doesn’t seem to matter whether it’s a big issue, or a small issue or no issue at all,” he said of the conflicts. “I don’t think that’s conducive to a good school system.”

It is unlikely a bond will pass in Whitepine, he said, so splitting in two is the best solution.

“I don’t feel any financial or moral obligation to build a school because Troy needs a school,” Proctor said. “I don’t feel that it’s the obligation of one end of the district to support the other end of the district.”

But Dorendorf said a majority of the property tax money comes from the east side of the district and that the west side might not be able to support itself if the district splits.

“I don’t think anybody has an answer that would make all four of the communities happy,” he said. “We have a high school that is inadequate and basically should be condemned; and we have a district that is trying to run four facilities and can’t support it.”

Whatever the answer, Dorendorf said he hopes it’s one that makes the largest section of the community happy. The district needs those residents to support a large maintenance and operations levy in May.

“If we lose that, we’re in some serious trouble,” he said.