Troy High Gets Another Patch Group Wants To Split District To Improve Chance Of Passing Bond

The faulty lighting system in the Troy Junior-Senior High School gym will be rewired Saturday, but administrators say the repair is just a patch on a much larger problem.

The Whitepine School Board voted Monday to spend $1,500 to $2,000 for the work, after a wire short-circuited there last month and sent sparks into the air during a seventh-grade gym class.

But the bigger issue is how to deal with the 94-year-old school, which has failed several safety inspections.

Attempts to pass a bond to build a new school in the Whitepine District have failed to win the state-mandated supermajority.

A group of community members from Troy, Deary, Bovill and Elk River have again raised the idea of splitting the district.

“If the district cannot pass a consolidation vote and our current system of passing levies every ten years to do patchwork at each end of the district is not producing a real long-term solution, then maybe it is time to seriously consider deconsolidation in order that communities can really run and support their own schools,” parent Myron Hotinger told the board Monday in a prepared statement.

Superintendent Harold Ott said he hopes to bring a consultant to the district in the next two weeks to discuss the feasibility of a split. That same consultant, Dave Teater, worked with the Bonner County School District last year on their successful separation.

Under the citizens’ group proposal, Troy would be split from the other communities. The lines would be redrawn so a 90,000-acre strip of land on the north boundary of the district would be connected to Troy, Ott said. That would help equalize the property values in what is currently a lop-sided district, with just $77 million of Whitepine’s $243 million in property value in Troy. The current lines would not leave the town with enough bonding capacity to build a new high school.

In other action, Deary School Principal Ray Ireland announced Monday he would retire a year early, effective in July.

In recent weeks, Ott and district auditor, Greg Mann, have announced their resignations.

“With the superintendent leaving, that was kind of a factor,” Ireland said Tuesday. “I just really enjoyed working with Mr. Ott. I appreciate all he has tried to do for the district.”

Ireland, 56, started as a teacher in Elk River in 1967. He became principal of the school, which serves about 230 fourth- through 12th-graders, in 1990.

“Maybe some new blood will be a good thing,” he said. “New people coming in with new ideas, younger people taking the reins, I think it can be a positive thing.”