Changes in education

COEUR d'ALENE - Steve Casey recently retired after working in education for 37 years in Idaho.

He spent much of his career at Lakes Middle School, first as a teacher, and then vice principal before moving on to Coeur d'Alene High School.

He started at CHS as vice principal in 1989 and took over as principal in 1994.

"There were 2,100 hundred kids in the high school, where the footprint was 1,400 max. That was the old high school," Casey said. "Bottom line was we were really crowded."

For several years during the '80s, when Casey was working at the middle school, CHS was running on split shifts. Some students attended classes in the morning and others in the afternoon.

The addition of 22 portables in 1989 helped ease the space squeeze, but didn't completely solve the crowding problem. It did put an end to the split-shifting.

"We were challenged with trying to bring back some regularity to the high school," Casey said.

A few years later, voters approved financing to build Lake City High School. John Brumley, CHS principal, left to become principal of the new school and Casey became principal of CHS.

That first year as the school's top administrator was a whirlwind, he said.

Divvying up the district's resources between two schools was an emotion-fueled endeavor. Teachers and coaches had to be split, attendance zones had to be created.

School administrators quickly learned that having two high schools is difficult, Casey said.

"Because you always have a winner, and you have a loser," he said.

The competition led to other problems, Casey said, including a misguided public perception that the new Lake City High School now had all of the district's best teachers along with brand new facilities.

"Nothing could have been further from the truth," Casey said. "We took the tack that education isn't all about glitz and glow. Good for Lake City, but what we have is tradition. Our facilities might not be all the way there, but we have a school with a heart."

Casey said he believes he and Brumley set the standard for the competitive yet harmonious cross-town rivalry that still exists between the district's high schools.

It wasn't easy, he said. Each principal had to fight for what he thought was best for his school.

"I always wanted to beat Lake City, because they're our rival. And I always wanted them to do well, because they're our rival. If we beat them and they're doing well, then we're even better," Casey said. "Our two high schools right now are very good high schools, athletically and academically. I think the two principals back then set the foundation, and I'm very proud of that."

Brumley retired as principal of Lake City High School in 2010.

Casey has touched a lot of students' lives through the years.

"I've been blessed. I've had a lot of really great kids. I've got kids that are cops, veterinarians, doctors," he said.

It's easy to remember some of the kids who were in trouble, Casey said. One of them is now is working in a high-level law enforcement position in the region.

"I had to suspend him from school when he was a senior for putting Limburger cheese down the air ducts at the high school," Casey said with a laugh.

He thinks most students eventually appreciate the guidance they receive through school discipline. Some came back through the years and thanked Casey.

Casey is particularly proud of his role in the inception of the School Resource Officer program in the Coeur d'Alene School District. SROs are police officers employed by the Coeur d'Alene Police Department, and stationed at the district's high schools and all but one of its middle schools.

During the days of overcrowding at CHS, Casey said it became increasingly difficult to keep track of and identify all the students. They began seeing faces that didn't belong in the student crowd at CHS, some from Spokane.

"We started having some gang issues," he said.

One day Casey noticed a bunch of students in an area behind the school, a place where they should not have been. He confronted them and was quickly surrounded by six kids who didn't attend CHS, and one student who was on suspension.

"I knew what was happening was not good," Casey said.

Casey convinced the student he knew to take his friends and leave. A few months later, the same kids were caught vandalizing the school. Police discovered they were all carrying guns.

"That changed how I dealt with discipline. I never went out alone anymore. Then we hired security guards to patrol the parking lots and watch for strangers," Casey said. "Out of that, we grew the SRO program."

It started with police officers coming to the school for lunch each day. Now uniformed officers are present full-time. The school district pays half the salaries of the SROs.

Casey is also proud of the Renaissance Program that began in his early days at the high school. It provides academic recognition for students whose grades improve significantly, or who have good attendance, not just those with higher grades. It also provides academic lettering.

"Not only were our good kids getting better, but our mediocre kids were getting better," Casey said.

Casey started the Senior Project at CHS as a way to combat "senioritis," and keep kids engaged through their final semester before graduation. It also provides them with some insight about possible career plans.

"Learning what you don't want to do is just as valuable as figuring out what you do want to do," he said.

Students choose an area of interest to research, do some work in, write about and give a presentation on.

Casey's enthusiasm for the Senior Project stems from his own experience as a student.

By his first year of high school, Casey had decided he wanted to be an architect major. He took the types of courses he needed in high school, and went on to study architecture at the University of Idaho.

He discovered during his senior year of college that he wasn't all that happy with architecture.

Casey decided to become an educator and went to college for another two years. He graduated as a physical education major and applied many of his architecture credits to earn a minor degree in math.

Casey resigned from his position at CHS in 2006 so he could run as a Republican for Idaho Superintendent of Instruction. He lost the primary to Tom Luna.

In 2007, he joined North Idaho College as coordinator of the college's dual credit program for high school students. Casey is retiring from NIC after growing the dual credit program by 85 percent in four years.

He and wife Linda don't have any big plans for Casey's first year of retirement.

"We're just going to let life come to us," he said.

Casey does intend to remain involved in the Senior Project program at CHS.

"We need to get kids focused at an earlier age. Waiting until they're juniors and seniors is way too late," he said.