Front-Row Seat
Most of the people whose daily lives will be affected by the outcome of Tuesday’s Post Falls school bond election are too young to vote.
They’re the 4,134 students in kindergarten through 12th grade who started classes in a stuffed-to-capacity school district in September.
The number of students in the district has grown by an average of 3.5 percent yearly over the past 10 years, according to data from the school district.
Post Falls population has grown by 9.4 percent yearly in that same period, according to state research.
If Tuesday’s bond passes, students will have a new high school in 2-1/2 years and their parents will have higher taxes. The passage of the $20.86 million 20-year bond issue would add $1 per $1,000 of assessed value to the school district’s levy rate.
Here’s a glimpse at what life is like for six students in the Post Falls School District. More stories, page A10.
TAWNY MOORE
Tawny Moore, a 15-year-old freshman at Post Falls High School, proudly points out that she and her classmates will be the first to graduate from the new high school if the bond passes.
“Our school is really crowded. We can barely walk through the halls,” said the freshman class officer.
As she warms up for her physical education class, she chats with friends, throwing some good-natured teasing at a few of them. Class begins, and she and her classmates get down to business with a session of weight lifting.
Moore’s school life keeps her busy with student government, basketball, track, soccer and Key Club, a philanthropic organization.
Someday, she wants to go to college, although she’s unsure what she’ll study, perhaps photography.
Meanwhile, the school bond issue has turned her interests to politics. She and the two other freshmen class officers, Nichole Billetz and Desiree Johnson, visited the Post Falls City Council to request its support of the bond.
“If it doesn’t pass, the schools are going to become full of more students and more students,” Moore said. “Post Falls is growing. The problem is just going to get worse.”
VIEW FROM THE CLASSROOM
SCOTT MCARTHUR
Every weekday starting at 12:25 p.m., 18-year-old Scott McArthur is practicing for his future.
The senior at Post Falls High School wants to be a civil engineer. That means a healthy dose of work in his high school drafting class.
“The class is pretty cool, but the tools are kind of old,” he said.
The 45-degree corners on the drafting triangles he uses are broken. Many of the T-squares the school uses lack straight edges.
“If I get a good job when I get out of here, I’m going to send some money to Mr. (Dan) Nipp” to buy better drafting supplies.
Nipp taught him about discipline, McArthur said.
“He’s an idol of mine,” he said. “I look up to him a lot. He helped me in discus in track, and in class.”
In addition to throwing discus and putting the shot, he’s involved in varsity basketball and football, French club, church activities, and working for the city Parks and Recreation Department as a referee in four sports.
For three or four Saturdays every winter, he volunteers to run a basketball program for 30 to 40 children in first through third grades.
McArthur’s impression of school overall is positive.
But he wishes the school had better tools - especially in his drafting class - and wishes it had a better parking lot than the muddy one full of potholes it has now.
“This year is probably one of my toughest years,” he said. “College prep English is a tough class, but he (teacher Chris Johnson) makes you work and I like that.”
For McArthur, the passage or failure of the school bond will have no effect on his public education. It will, however, affect his checkbook.
“I’ll be impacted because I’ll be paying taxes,” he said.
He will graduate in May, but he said he looks at the crowded hallways around him and thinks about the students and teachers who will be there in the future.
“We need a new high school,” he said.
ANDY MUELLER
Since September, 13-year-old Andy Mueller’s school day has been starting at 12:30 p.m. and ending at 5:48 p.m.
That means the seventh-grader at the Post Falls Middle School doesn’t have as much time with his family as he has in past school years with traditional schedules.
“It’s really hard for my family because we were used to eating together, and now I usually eat by myself,” he said.
He plays the trombone in band and is taking honors classes in school. When he graduates from high school in five years, he would like to continue his education, he said.
“College would be a big thing for me,” he said. “I’ll probably do something with animals because I have too many pets.”
He has a 75-year-old desert tortoise, a snake and a frog.
“I really like going here. I’ve gotten a lot of friends,” he said. “I don’t really like the double-shifting, though. I have to go directly from here to Coeur d’Alene for junior symphony and then directly to Boy Scouts.”
And he doesn’t like riding the bus home in the dark.
If the bond passes, the new high school will open as he enters 10th grade.
NICOLE WETZEL
Double-shifting at the middle school makes it tough to juggle activities like volleyball and homework for 12-year-old Nicole Wetzel.
The seventh grader is a self-professed “major volleyball player” and that, combined with the fact that she doesn’t get out of school until nearly 6 p.m., strains her schedule. She doesn’t have time to do homework in the evenings, as she would prefer, and instead does it before school in the mornings.
“I don’t get to spend much time with my family because in the morning, my parents go to work,” she said.
That means dinner time is just about the only time they see each other, she said.
Her other activities - basketball, baseball and hanging out with her friends - are affected as well.
She’s well aware of the safety issues surrounding her schedule.
“Most parents don’t like their kids walking home in the dark,” she said. “That takes the fun out of riding your bike to school and back.”
While she doesn’t yet know what she wants to study in college, “mainly I want to be an animal trainer.”
She’s almost done with her first school year of double-shifting. She has one more to go, regardless of whether the school bond passes.
LAUREN JACOBSON
A sign that greets visitors to Ponderosa Elementary School students states, “Learning Zone. Enter With Pride.”
The entry opens into the library, where students are quietly working or reading. At recess, the sound of children’s laughter dances across the playground. Grown-ups around here are more likely to have cartoon characters or ABCs on their apparel than pinstripes.
Fifth-grader Lauren Jacobson’s class is reading “Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh.”
Reading with the class is part of how her teacher, Moira DuCoeur, makes learning fun with “lots of activities,” Jacobson said.
The 10-year-old plans to go to college someday.
“I probably want to become a teacher because it just seems like it would be fun and I love little kids,” she said.
During the school year, Jacobson and the 27 other students in her class will spend just over six hours per day here in this school of 609 students.
“It’s neat because you get to meet lots of people and the teachers explain things,” she said.
Even if the bond passes Tuesday, Jacobson will start double-shifting as she enters the middle school next year. In her eighth-grade year, she would return to a normal schedule with the opening of the high school.
LUKE HOHENSTREET
In teacher Mary Kay Rayniak’s fifth-grade class at Ponderosa Elementary, 11-year-old Luke Hohenstreet is learning all the standard subject matter - science, reading, math, social studies and music.
Science is his favorite, and studying it now may help him reach his goal of someday being an architect or astronaut.
“I like to learn about science because I like to learn more about the Earth,” he said. “Our teacher explains it pretty good. In science we get to do a lot of hands-on experiences.”
After school, he spends his time going to Awana - a church youth group - taking care of his two Siamese fighter fish and his tarantula, playing the piano and collecting Legos.
When he finishes school in Post Falls, he wants to attend North Idaho College, he said.
If the bond passes, he still will endure two years of double-shifting in sixth and seventh grades while the school is being built. Only in eighth grade would his schedule return to normal.
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 7 Photos (6 Color); Graphic: Building schools can cost a bundle