Hayden man takes on district

If there’s a law on the books dealing with the public school system, Brad St. John can probably recite it from memory. If there’s a public record on the Coeur d’Alene School District, it’s likely he’s requested it.

For a half-dozen years, the Hayden parent has been on a mission to fix what he thinks is wrong with the Coeur d’Alene School District.

Everyone from Coeur d’Alene Superintendent Harry Amend to Idaho Sen. John Goedde and even the state attorney general’s office has fielded hundreds of e-mails, phone calls and information requests from St. John. The school district says they have spent hundreds of hours responding to St. John’s requests.

“There will be days when he will send various people multiple e-mails demanding information,” said Hazel Bauman, Coeur d’Alene’s assistant superintendent. “And the next day, and the next day … It’s pretty intense.”

In 1999, St. John complained to the state that the district was counting recess and time children spent walking to class as instructional time.

Due in part to St. John’s efforts, legislation was passed in 2000 that prohibited districts from counting recess as instructional time.

For the past three years, he has criticized the district for falling behind the state’s textbook adoption cycle and not including the information on its accreditation reports.

Amend said the district went to the State Department of Education and State Board of Education with St. John’s concerns about textbooks and that the district believes they are in compliance. St. John wasn’t happy with the answers the district provided, though, Amend said.

St. John asked the Idaho State Police to investigate his claim that nearly 11,000 textbooks the district said they purchased could not be found.

Amend said the ISP cleared the district, but St. John didn’t accept the findings.

Over the years, some haven’t been able to disguise how irritated they were by St. John’s relentless correspondence.

In the spring of 2004, Harv Lyter, then employed by the state board, sent an e-mail to Assistant Attorney General Don Robertson, state school officials and Amend. The e-mail contains what St. John describes as “conspiracy evidence.”

“I will engage (St. John) for a brief period to draw his attention to me and off all the others,” Lyter wrote. “At the point I feel I have that, I’ll also disengage from further contact.”

“Hopefully, at that point he’ll see no future in continued engagement, but we all know that’s unlikely.”

At one point, school district attorney Charlie Dodson wrote St. John that he was concerned about comments he’d made about the “termination of the board” and saying that the trustees should be tarred and feathered and tied to trees “for dogs to urinate upon.”

St. John has also referred to trustees as “the free donut gang.”

He said he feels like he has earned the right to be frustrated and angry. He said he doesn’t feel the district has truly answered his questions.

“The district is difficult to work with,” he said. “They try to wear you out, baloney you or intimidate you.”

St. John is adamant that he won’t be worn down.

“The victims are the kids,” he said. “That is why I do this.”