KTEC classes begin in 2013
COEUR d'ALENE - High school freshmen and eighth-graders entering schools this fall could be among the first students to attend classes on the Kootenai Technical Education Campus that will be built on the Rathdrum Prairie.
Plans for the high school's doors to open in the fall of 2013 are on track, since voters on Tuesday approved financing for construction of a $9.5 million professional-technical high school.
The new school will offer classes in skilled trades - health occupations, welding, construction and automotive trades - to junior and senior high school students in the Post Falls, Coeur d'Alene and Lakeland school districts.
It's not too early for students to begin looking at what courses they can take now to prepare them for one of the KTEC programs.
"Most importantly, they should be discussing KTEC with their parents and their home school counselors," said Jerry Keane, superintendent of the Post Falls School District.
Dean Haagenson, CEO of Contractors Northwest and an active member of the KTEC committee, anticipates that the firm selected to build the school will break ground in mid- to-late 2012.
The work can't begin until that time because the Idaho Code that regulates local property tax funding for building projects like KTEC, requires that all the property taxes be collected prior to the start of construction.
Haagenson estimates that peak employment on the job will be about 40 construction workers.
The tax dollars for the project will be received by the districts twice a year, in January and July of 2011, and in the same months in 2012. Those funds will be transferred to KTEC, and can be used only for the construction project.
For taxpayers, the costs will be reflected in their property tax payments beginning this December, and in their December and June tax bills through the start of construction in 2012.
The owner of a $200,000 home in the Coeur d'Alene School District will see a property tax bill increase of about $35 per year for two years. That same home in the Post Falls district will not see an increase because an existing levy is expiring. In the Lakeland School District, that homeowner's property tax bill will be roughly $50 for each of the next two years.
The KTEC group already selected the project's architect, Longwell and Trapp Associates of Hayden, through a bid process last year.
Keane, who is also chair of the executive committee that governs KTEC, said no decision has been made as to when additional bid requests will go out.
"We will time the bid of the project to No. 1, guarantee we can open on time, and No. 2, take advantage of the best bid climate," Keane said.
They already have agreements formed with CAT, GM, and Miller Welding Equipment to donate after the school is built.
North Idaho College is planning to build its own $35.4 million dollar professional-technical facility on property it owns adjacent to the high school site. The building will house the college's Trades and Industry technical programs.
John Martin, NIC's vice president for community relations, said their facility will be built in two phases. The first $20.5 million phase has already been submitted to Idaho's Department of Public Works as a capital budget request for 2013, and is No. 2 on NIC's building priority list behind the joint use building planned on the education corridor, adjacent to the Coeur d'Alene campus.
"Currently, the only financing applied for is state building funds through DPW," Martin said.
The second phase of NIC construction on the KTEC site is on the college's capital request list for 2017, although Martin said the first phase will be useable and fully operational without the second phase. Martin said the second phase will accommodate increased enrollments.