Charter Academy Buys Classrooms For $4 Cda District Sells Four Used Portables To Independent Public School

Four dollars bought Coeur d’Alene Charter Academy enough portable classrooms to house 100 additional students in the next two years, yet the school needs $60,000 in donations to make the building operational.

The four detached classrooms, which the Coeur d’Alene School District sold for $1 each, will allow the charter school to include 11th grade this year and 12th grade the following term.

The trailerlike buildings are on site, but the school needs $60,000 for heat, power and water connections, walkways and minor changes to meet building codes.

Dean of students Nels Pitotti said Monday fund raising is in progress although no formal events are planned.

“We don’t do a song and dance routine,” Pitotti said. “We’re just pretty straightforward - `Give us your bucks.”’ Pitotti added that the community has been supportive of the academy’s needs since it opened last September as an education alternative.

The Coeur d’Alene School District gets credit for generosity as well, Pitotti said.

Superintendent David Rawls said the sale was a good-faith effort to help Kootenai County’s only charter school.

The district could have auctioned the buildings to the highest bidder, but instead chose to benefit the charter school. New portable classrooms would cost about $40,000, although the 25-year-old modulars aren’t worth that much.

Rawls said it’s an ongoing debate whether charter schools are part of the district, but this controversy didn’t impact the sale.

“It was good will for us,” Rawls said.

Pitotti agreed.

“We have an excellent relationship with them,” he said. “The idea isn’t to compete, but to complete one another.”

Charter schools are independent public schools that take a different approach to education than regular schools. The Coeur d’Alene Charter Academy focuses on preparing students for college.

In other news, the charter school will formally announce at Wednesday’s board meeting the hiring of John Sarchio as chief administrator, Pitotti said.

Sarchio has been instrumental in creating a similar charter school in Sandpoint - Da Vinci Charter Academy, which was approved by Lake Pend Oreille school trustees in March.

Sarchio replaces Principal Bill Proser, who will become the school’s academic dean.