$14.6 million school levy close to passing

The Coeur d’Alene School District’s $14.6 million, two-year supplemental levy appeared to be passing Tuesday evening, though not as easily as the district’s supplemental levies in previous years.

With 15 of 17 polling places reporting, the levy was passing with about 55 percent of the vote. It needed a simple majority to pass. The district’s past two supplemental levy measures passed with more than 70 percent approval.

Homeowners in the Coeur d’Alene School District will pay more taxes for education with the apparent approval of the levy Tuesday. The owner of a $150,000 home would pay $162 a year after homeowners’ exemptions – a $50 annual increase over the levy expiring this spring.

Incumbents were leading in races for both open seats on Coeur d’Alene’s five-member school board. Sid Fredrickson received 245 votes to Diane Tetzner’s 113 with four of five polling places in the Zone 5 election counted.

Diane Zipperer, incumbent for Zone 4, was leading with 186 votes in the race against write-in candidate Kathleen Silvas. At least two dozen ballots in that race were reported as “spoiled” and not counted. Silvas had received 40 votes with results from the Winton Elementary School polling site yet to be counted.

Parent Linda Miller was among the levy supporters awaiting results at the district’s Midtown Meeting Room late Tuesday. Miller said she’s most passionate about the district’s proposal to improve programs for high achievers through the levy.

“I wish the Advanced Learning Program had been in existence for my gifted daughter since kindergarten,” Miller said. “It’s the advanced learners who usually get the short shrift in education because everyone thinks they’ll make do.”

The single largest increase in the levy request – $940,000 a year – would add an advanced learning teacher at each of the district’s elementary schools. Spanish classes will be offered at the middle schools and the International Baccalaureate program would be offered to juniors and seniors at Coeur d’Alene and Lake City high schools.

Coeur d’Alene could be the first district in the state to implement the internationally accepted diploma program.

Levy funds would also be used to help the district catch up to the state’s five-year textbook adoption cycle. Most of the district’s textbooks are no longer on the state-approved list. About $750,000 each year of the levy will go toward textbook purchases.

The district plans to bolster the remediation programs it implemented with funds from the levy voters approved in 2003. An additional $549,000 was included in each year of the levy proposal to expand the district’s all-day kindergarten program for struggling students.

That money will also help expand the School Within a School program at the high school level. Students identified as “at risk” by teachers, parents and counselors are placed in the program. They eat breakfast as a group and take their toughest academic classes together, with more one-on-one support from adults.