Making A Difference: An Occasional Series Profiling North Idaho’S Community Leaders ‘She’S A Gem’ Stephanie Powers Has Immersed Herself In The Education World And That World Is Glad She Has

The letters and numbers pour from Stephanie Powers’ mouth in a fluent stream.

“Is the district budgeting 7 percent of its ICTL money?” she casually asks a phone caller who must understand because Powers offers no translation.

She’s speaking education, a tongue she’s mastered during years of volunteer work in the Coeur d’Alene School District.

Powers, 36, has led parent-teacher organizations, read to children and run errands for teachers. She’s helped the district analyze its school borders, evaluate technology and plan for the future.

She runs Coeur d’Alene’s EXCEL Foundation, which raises money for school projects the district can’t afford. And, in her spare time, she evaluates school programs for the University of Idaho’s Coeur d’Alene Center.

“She’s a person who can take a big picture and break it down into components and go out and deal with those components,” says Jack Dawson, who directs UI’s Coeur d’Alene Center. “She’s a gem.”

Who has to stay busy. Her plan not to work after having children didn’t include volunteer work.

Fifteen years ago, Nordstrom gave Powers a start that couldn’t compete with college. The department store offered her money, management training and a mile-high career ladder. She jumped on and never glanced down.

When children entered the picture, Powers redirected her energy. She left Seattle to settle in Hayden Lake with her husband, Chris, a builder, and their daughters, Sadie and Maddie.

Her husband built a huge wood home overlooking the lake and Powers went to work raising children. But one responsibility wasn’t enough.

“I had been so busy in the work force,” she says. “I’d traveled a lot. I didn’t have the same connections here.”

She found new connections in Spokane’s Junior League, an organization that trains women volunteers to work in the community.

She also volunteered to help North Idaho children who face court proceedings because of family problems - divorce, abuse, abandonment.

“In the midst of a court battle, people don’t often think of the kids,” she says.

The two programs kept her running. She organized relief drives for foster parents in Spokane and took on court case after court case in Coeur d’Alene.

After her girls began school in 1994, Powers found herself in their classrooms, doing anything teachers needed.

“I don’t like to have time on my hands,” she says. “And I love being around the kids, seeing them grow and learn.”

Teachers are quick to spot parent achievers and gently push them into leadership roles. Powers led Hayden Lake Elementary’s parent group for two years. When the district wanted parents to help it figure out new school boundaries, Powers never hesitated.

Mike Bullard, pastor of Coeur d’Alene’s First Presbyterian Church, co-chaired the boundary committee with Powers.

“She drove around neighborhood after neighborhood, talked to builders about when homes would be finished, looked at every school classroom by classroom,” Bullard says.

“It worked because Stephanie did her homework, and she was respected for that.”

The new boundaries were nearly problem-free. Powers was as popular as class president after that.

The district appointed her to a committee to study long-term attendance zone issues. UI’s Dawson hired her to evaluate technology projects in the public schools.

The Coeur d’Alene School District hired her to help plan its future. Parents at Hayden Meadows chose her to lead their group after her daughters moved to that school.

The schedule doesn’t tax her.

“I’ll always be doing something,” she says. “I don’t really get wound up.”

But she does get absorbed. She’s immersed herself in the education world so completely that she uses “facilitate” and “curriculum integration” in casual conversation without noticing.

“I enjoy what I’m doing as long as I’m learning something,” she says. “When you wake up every morning and know you’re making a difference, you just do whatever it takes.”