Parents look at closer schools

Some Bonner County parents who live closer to Kootenai County’s schools than to the schools in their own county are petitioning to be annexed into the Lakeland School District.

Residents can comment on the petition at public hearings this week in the Lakeland and West Bonner districts. The petition seeks to shift 21 square miles from the West Bonner district to the Lakeland district. The area in question includes 20 square miles of land in Bonner County just north of Spirit Lake and a square mile that includes the Treeport subdivision farther east.

Supporters of the proposal say it makes more sense to send students to Spirit Lake because it’s closer to home. School boards in both districts haven’t taken formal action to endorse or oppose the petition, but both have expressed concerns about the potential impact.

The West Bonner district estimates the loss of about 95 students could cost the district $584,000 annually in property taxes and state and federal funding. Lakeland officials are worried about the potential for overcrowding in the Spirit Lake schools – especially Spirit Lake Elementary.

Maranatha Poler lives in Bonner County, but she has a Spirit Lake address and works in Spirit Lake, and that’s where her family attends church. If she needs a loaf of bread, she drives three miles across the county line dividing Bonner and Kootenai counties and shops in Spirit Lake.

“It’s our community,” Poler said.

During the school year, Poler said, she wakes her children at 5:30 each morning so they can catch the school bus an hour later. The children spend at least an hour on the school bus before arriving at Idaho Hills Elementary in Oldtown, she said.

Aside from events at the children’s school, Poler said the only other reason she drives north to Oldtown is to dump her trash.

The parent leading the petition effort, Tonya Reed, said she considers Spirit Lake to be her hometown, too. With a child going into kindergarten, she said she’s concerned about the amount of time her child would spend each day traveling to and from school.

She said she believes students who live so close to Kootenai County miss out on extracurricular activities and other school events. If parents can’t pick their kids up from games or practice, she said, those kids don’t get to participate.

“It all comes back to what’s in the best interest for our children,” Reed said.

Reed was required to gather signatures from a quarter of the residents in the area that would be annexed before the school boards would consider the proposal. She said she was able to gather more signatures than that.

Following this week’s public hearings, the hearing examiner will issue a report and make a recommendation to the state Board of Education. If the board approves the proposal, then the matter would go before voters in the area proposed for annexation.

The residents of the areas proposed for annexation would have to approve the annexation and also agree to assume the Lakeland School District’s bond debt, which is higher than Priest River’s.

Poler said she figured the increase in property taxes would be less than what a parent would spend on gas driving their children to school in Oldtown or to the district’s junior high and high school in Priest River. A round trip in her diesel truck costs about $8, she said.

If the proposal goes forward, Lakeland Assistant Superintendent Ron Schmidt said he hopes the change would take effect at the beginning of a school year. If the students entered the district midyear, Schmidt said, it would be an unexpected strain on his district.

He said there is a possibility that the district could receive more than 95 students if the annexation is approved. Reed said she knows of families in the area who home-school their children because of the distance between their home and West Bonner schools. She said some might enroll in Lakeland if they had the chance.

Both Reed and Schmidt said some parents break rules already so their children can go to school in Lakeland. Some use addresses of friends or relatives who live in the district.

Reed said she knows of a woman who purchased a condo in the Lakeland district and doesn’t live there, but uses the condo address so her children can go to school there. She’s also heard stories about parents signing over their parental rights to others who live in the district so their children can attend school closer to home.

“In that area, it’s been an ongoing issue,” Schmidt said. “We are a closed district and if we are aware that a student does not meet board policy with regards to residency, we’ll be meeting with parents and asking them to comply.”

Schmidt said the district would likely force those parents to pay tuition to attend Lakeland’s schools.