Bonner County Residents Sign Up To Lead Schools State Ed Board Will Appoint Trustees For New Districts At Meeting This Month
There are twice as many school board seats to fill in Bonner County now, but interest isn’t lacking.
The deadline is 5 p.m. Monday to apply for one of 10 positions on the two newly formed school district boards. As of Thursday, the state Department of Education had received at least one application for each zone.
East Bonner County School District No. 84 had seven applicants for its five zones and West Bonner County School District No. 83 had six, possibly seven, applicants.
The department had a letter of recommendation for one applicant in District 83, but no application had arrived from that individual yet, explained Deb Stage of the state department.
The two new districts were formed by a 63 percent vote of county residents on Dec. 8.
Instead of one countywide district, voters chose to form a district from Laclede west, and another district east of Laclede.
The state Board of Education is expected to appoint trustees to the two boards at its Jan. 24-25 meeting. The existing District 82 board will act as a joint operating board until July 1 when the two new districts will begin functioning separately.
Jim Cooper, chairman of the existing board, said he hopes the state board will appoint trustees who have experience. For instance, he and trustee Ann Souza have applied for the east district, and trustee Eric Eldenburg has applied for the west district.
“The big fear with some people was getting people on the board who don’t know a lot about school operations,” Cooper said earlier this week. “At this point there’s two on this side (east side) and one on that side that will be on the board, so that will bring some continuity to the boards.”
In May, all of the trustees in each of the newly formed districts will be up for election to staggered terms.
In the meantime, school officials haven’t been waiting for the new school boards to be formed before they start the work of splitting the district.
The existing District 82 board is continuing its efforts to streamline the district’s policy manual so that it can be used as a model for the two new boards.
“If they adopt it, it will make things easier for the two new boards,” Cooper said.
Cooper, Eldenburg, the district’s business manager and attorney, and consultant Dave Teater are on the transition team preparing for the division. The team is developing a checklist of procedures and tasks that must be done by each school board in order to have operating school districts in July.
Cooperation will be critical to the successful division, Cooper said. Ironically, it was the inability to get along that prompted the division in the first place.
“Now we’re in a situation where we’re literally forced to get along more so,” he said.