No levy for Lake Pend Oreille

Although the schools are overcrowded and have leaky roofs and old heating systems, most voters in the Lake Pend Oreille district think they’re just fine.

That’s according to preliminary results from a 200-person survey the district commissioned earlier this month.

“That was a surprise,” Superintendent Mark Berryhill said on Thursday.

“I don’t think we have done a good job of letting voters know what the facility concerns are,” Berryhill said. “It showed that we are not prepared at this point in time to take it to the voters, and the voters are not prepared to support it.”

The Sandpoint-based district had considered running a capital improvement election this spring or fall, but decided – even before the survey results were known – to put the election on hold.

Area voters haven’t passed a facilities levy since 1985, or a bond measure since 1953.

The district will continue drafting a short- and long-term proposal for buildings and will start talking to constituents about the schools’ needs, Berryhill said.

Sandpoint High School was built for 900 students but houses 1,300, Berryhill said. The alternative high school is housed in a facility that is 96 years old. The middle school has an archaic electrical system that can’t support modern equipment.

Still, Berryhill added, levies and bonds – that cull from property taxes and are the only two ways to fund school buildings in Idaho – are “very unpopular at this point of time, and the survey said that loud and clear.”

The district has to put the issue before voters, though. “We’ve let some of our facility needs go by the wayside,” Berryhill said. The district should have addressed problems year by year, he added, instead of waiting for the situation to become an “emergency.”

Berryhill hopes having the long- and short-term plan will help in the future.

Would Coeur d’Alene have benefited from doing a survey before its failed levy?

Assistant Superintendent Hazel Bauman doesn’t know. “Did people vote no because they didn’t know how dire the situation is in these buildings? Or did they vote no because of taxes? Or a combination of both?”

Coeur d’Alene board member Vern Newby said a set of unique factors influenced the election outcome: a large issue in a tough tax climate; the Person Field controversy; a mass mailing from an opposing citizen; the fact that renovating Lakes was supposed to be paid for by an earlier levy. A survey wouldn’t have helped address those issues for voters, he said.

But one thing both districts do have in common, Newby said, was an increasing challenge of convincing patrons – a growing number of whom don’t have children in school – of school needs.