Projecting major growth in the West Plains, Cheney Public Schools solicits community input in bond efforts

With rapid growth predicted in outlying areas of Airway Heights and West Plains, Cheney Public Schools leaders worry that without more schools, overcrowding is imminent.

How to adjust to the swelling population is the multimillion-dollar question. It’s a question district leaders turned to the community to answer as they prepare to ask voters next year to consider higher taxes to prevent overcrowding.

The district assembled a committee of 26 district residents in December to draft and recommend a bond to the school board, surveying voters through the process.

To the school board, which has the final say on the amount and the application of the bond, the committee recommended seeking an estimated $68 million bond to fund the building of an elementary school in Airway Heights, purchasing two sites for a future elementary school and middle or high school, and renovating existing schools.

“The fact that we’re here and we’re growing, kind of helps us to say, ‘No, this really is something that we need to address,’ ” said committee co-chair John Boerger, a Cheney resident, district parent and candidate for the Cheney School Board.

Unlike most local school districts, Cheney Public Schools enrollment already has topped numbers the district had before the pandemic.

Of the 19 districts in Spokane County, Cheney is geographically the largest by about 80 square miles. In terms of last year’s enrollment numbers, it’s the fourth-most populous.

While the final ballot measure still requires the board’s approval, the board unanimously approved the framework of the proposal in June. The preliminary figures were calculated based on assumptions of costs to build, acquire land and update facilities. Come February, these figures may have changed.

The estimated cost would add an additional 53 cents per $1,000 assessed property value, for a total property tax rate of $1.94 per $1,000 for bond projects.

The committee included residents of each of the 380-square-mile district’s three regions: the relatively urban Cheney proper, unincorporated West Plains and the area in and around Airway Heights – home to several Amazon warehouses and fulfillment centers.

“We really wanted to make sure that the three community groups that we identified were adequately represented, to make sure that it was a full community decision, and that we looked at short- and long-term needs for facilities,” Boerger said. “That was kind of our charter.”

Superintendent Ben Ferney said it was critical to represent the interests of residents in outlying areas in the district – though rural by Cheney’s comparison, commercial and residential growth indicates a population boom.

The district estimates that in the next decade, Cheney schools will grow by 760 students: nearly 500 of them in the Airway Heights growth area and over 250 in West Plains. Current enrollment trends support this prediction, with Cheney Public Schools’ population reaching 105% of the district’s pre-COVID enrollment, while other districts see the opposite trend. Schools statewide last school year averaged 96% of their 2019 enrollment. Regionally, Spokane Public Schools is rebounding slower at 94%, Central Valley is at 99% and Mead has 95% of population prepandemic, according to the state Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction’s enrollment records.

Without another facility, Cheney’s five existing elementary schools would surge to 129% of intended classroom capacity, the district predicts. Schools would create temporary classrooms in the form of portables, which the district said aren’t as safe as buildings and cost more to maintain. The initial price to set up a portable is almost $1 million, according to Finance Director Jamie Reed. By 2031, a fourth of Cheney elementary school students would have class in a portable without a new school.

“It’s certainly an option, but when we looked at it and when we talked to the community, nobody said, ‘Yeah, that’s what we need to do,’ ” Boerger said. “It was, ‘We’ve got to do something.’ ”

For the bond to pass, Cheney will need 60% of voters to agree to raise taxes to fund the construction of a school, acquisition of land and updates on existing buildings.

Garnering the supermajority’s endorsement is a summit for any district to conquer, Ferney said. The multimillion-dollar ballot measures have had mixed success in Cheney’s past.

In 2017, voters approved a $52 million bond mostly appropriated to renovating an overcrowded Cheney High School. It was the district’s first successful passage since 2010. Leading up to the ballot measure, the district hosted public forums and surveyed stakeholders, a strategy echoed in this bond cycle.

The committee held monthly meetings and public forums for community feedback. Each meeting saw about 10-20 attendees present: parents, staff and residents, to weigh in on drafts.

“It was laserlike focus,” Ferney said. “It always came back to the community.”

Feedback indicated strong support for new buildings, though more people endorsed a more expensive option not recommended to the board that seeks funds to build two elementary schools immediately, rather than build one and buy land this bond cycle and consider construction costs for a second proposal in 2029.

Considering the time to find and purchase land, the committee proposed the draft involving one elementary school on the ballot this cycle. Boerger said he hopes the residents feel the curtain is lifted on the bond-raising process and makes the multimillion-dollar request more palatable to voters.

“We said to the community, ‘We want your fingerprints on this plan.’ So when we go and say as a group: community and district, ‘This is what we believe we need,’ we’ve gone to people, we’ve asked for their input, their fingerprints are here,” Boerger said. “It represents all of you. Now we’d like your support financially to make this plan happen.”

Boerger is running for a seat on Cheney’s school board against Bill Hanson, who said he wasn’t aware of the proposal before The Spokesman-Review informed him. He said he supported the committee’s proposal, given their research on the topic. He has observed growth in outlying areas of the district and agreed these areas should be the focus of future school sites, especially a secondary school, given overcrowding, he said.

“As spread out as we are, it would be nice to see about expanding the facilities footprint to support the influx of students,” he said.

Raising the tax rate for bonds in the district to $1.94 per $1,000 in property value would be an “expensive pill to swallow,” he said.

“Well, as a property owner, I say, ‘Ouch,’ ” he said after crunching the numbers.

But he added: “If that’s what it’s going to take to keep Cheney schools on its path. We need to support our kids, and that starts with the facilities.”