School Perilous, Students Testify Lawmakers Kill Bill For New High School

Bob Uebelher, student body president at Troy High School, says going to school in the dilapidated building is like playing the lottery.

“The stairs are unstable, the cafeteria floods, there’s loose wires in the attic - you never know what might happen,” he said.

Uebelher was one of four Troy students testifying before the Senate Education Committee Thursday, where - in a tie vote - lawmakers killed a bill that would have handed over $1 million to help build a new Troy High School. The school building has been ranked as one of the six worst in the state.

Members of the committee did approve another $1 million plan to establish a Public School Safety Commission. The group would identify safety problems in schools, and fund repairs. The cost makes the bill’s future uncertain. Its fate will be up to the Legislature’s budget committee.

Both bills were sponsored by the committee chairman, Sen. Gary Schroeder, R-Moscow.

“Quite honestly, a lot of folks in this Legislature do not want to provide one dime for school facilities,” he said. “I guess that’s all right if all of our kids were going to school in good facilities, but they’re not.”

Uebelher and Troy High School Principal Conrad Underdahl flew into Boise on Thursday morning and met up with three Troy girls’ basketball team members, in Boise for state championship tournament games. Uebelher said he was there to make it clear to lawmakers that “Troy High School is a poor example of what Idaho schools should be.”

“Sometimes we can’t use the cafeteria because it’s flooded, and the walls are coming down,” he said. “We’ve almost accepted the fact that we go to a dangerous school.”

Judging from the district’s history of failed bond attempts, it seems like everyone has accepted that fact. But Uebelher and his classmates said if not for the nearby community of Deary, Troy would have passed a bond years ago.

Deary’s high school is in fine shape, said Uebelher, who recently toured the school with Troy’s Student Council. In the last bond election, 67 percent of Troy residents were for building a new school, while only 25 percent of Deary residents supported the bond.

“The simple fact is that these communities can’t agree on this issue,” Uebelher said. “This bill is one of our last resorts.”

Members of the committee disputed the bill on the grounds that it only addressed one of many needy schools. Sen. Shawn Keough, R-Sandpoint, moved to approve the bill and send it to the Legislature’s budget committee for consideration. Legislators have “a moral obligation to do something about dangerous schools,” Keough said. But a tied vote killed her motion.

Sen. Betsy Dunklin, D-Boise, was absent from the committee. Schroeder said after the meeting, “If Betsy had been here, that bill would have gone somewhere.”

Schroeder also has sponsored bills to lower the two-thirds supermajority to pass school construction bonds, and to conduct a statewide advisory vote on possibly raising the sales tax to fund school buildings. Both are bottled up in the Senate State Affairs Committee, where they haven’t been scheduled for hearings.

His committee voted unanimously Thursday to send a letter to that panel, demanding hearings. “We have some deplorable situations in our schools,” Schroeder said. “Hopefully we will come up with legislation to fix those situations.”