High School Marks City’S New Beginning

I know, I know. It’s just a building made of bricks and wood and steel and glass. But on the first day of classes Tuesday the brand new high school in Post Falls was so much more.

As 1,000-plus students looked on, Gov. Dirk Kempthorne, Mayor Gus Johnson, Principal John Billitz and school board trustees cut the ribbon as the first bell rang.

In a shiny new gym, dubbed “the arena at Post Falls,” the bleachers were packed with students and teachers flush with excitement. With a respect for all things past, including graduating classes whose photos adorn the hallways, the day was about the future.

Post Falls has the distinction of opening the only new high school in the state this year, and there’s no finer school in all the country, according to the governor.

Gov. Kempthorne became the proud owner of the very first commemorative letterman’s jacket from the new school and has never looked more handsome than he did wearing our Trojan black and orange.

And while speeches and handshakes and smiles were the order of the day, there was no person more positively glowing than Superintendent Dick Harris. This new school has been a personal crusade by a man who’s spent his entire career in educational administration.

He arrived in this district just a few months after a bond levy failed to garner even 50 percent approval. After two more levies failed, in 1998 a single vote pushed the new high school into motion. On the first day of school Dr. Harris wasn’t up front leading the parade, he stood back taking it all in and when his turn came to speak, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who noticed a little catch in his voice.

New buildings don’t solve every problem but new attitudes do. There’s a new era dawning in Post Falls, and I was honored to observe the beginnings right there in the arena at Post Falls High School.

Go Trojans!

Post Falls High School’s Class of 1995 donated a Trojan painting on the east wall of the former high school gym after they graduated. More than one member of that class had lamented that their donation would now be painted over for the middle school Spartans.

I’m pleased to report that the brand new gym at the brand new high school features a re-creation of that painting, right down to the “donated by the Class of ‘95.”

I spent a week on the road to North Dakota. An admitted news addict, I was hating being out of touch during the first week of the big trial. All through Montana and each day in North Dakota I bought newspapers, scanning them for news.

I’m happy to report that the Aryans were a nonevent for the most part media-wise in both states. A very small story on the trial one day from the Associated Press focused on the FBI agents posing as journalists and an editorial in the Billings paper mentioned North Idaho, but not the Aryans.

There are very strong feelings in Montana about the firefighting pumper trucks being cited for being overweight at the Huetter weigh station, though. Scathing would be an accurate description of the editorial content on that one.

My husband Bert was flipping through the channels one morning while we were in North Dakota, and lo and behold, there on the Sally Jesse Raphael Show were the parents of Nick Scherling, the Post Falls Middle School student who was killed by a drunk driver as he walked home after dark in 1997.

Although Bert didn’t recall all of the details, the show topic was about forgiveness. Nick’s father told Sally that he had forgiven the woman who killed his son. His mother said she would never forgive her.

Mr. Scherling commented that it could have been anyone driving the car that night. While, thank God, I’ve never walked in his shoes I feel strongly that most people do not get behind the wheel of a car when they’re so incoherently intoxicated that they don’t realize they’ve struck a human being and leave the scene of an accident.

But even without the Scherling’s appearance on the Sally Jesse Raphael Show, many of us would be thinking about their son this week with the opening of the new high school. Nick’s tragic death at age 13 brought the issue of double-shifting at the middle school to a community wide consciousness and most probably had the most impact on the passage of the school bond levy the next May.

A little bittersweet touch to the celebration here in Idaho’s River City.