Cost of counsel

COEUR d'ALENE - The Coeur d'Alene School District's recent consideration of whether to privatize school busing went on for several months, and it included 64 hours of legal work with an average cost of $180 per hour in attorney fees for the district.

The bus privatization plan was expected to save $1 million, but facing public opposition, the board decided in June to step away from the idea.

The $11,520 bill for the legal work remained.

That's just one of the items adding up to $238,000 in attorney fees that the Coeur d'Alene School District incurred in the most recently completed fiscal year which began July 1, 2012, and ended June 30.

The previous year the district spent $38,000 on lawyers.

School officials in the roughly 10,100-student district attribute the bulk of the $200,000 spike in attorney fees to the $32.7 million bond voters approved in August 2012, and the associated contracts related to the multiple construction projects the bond is financing.

"Other than the bond, with a system of our size, any inquiry with regard to special education, ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) or human resource matters requires a very thorough review," said district spokeswoman Laura Rumpler.

Most of the legal work done for the Coeur d'Alene School District in the last year was completed by Attorney Marc Lyons and other professionals from Lyons' Coeur d'Alene firm, Ramsden and Lyons. The firm began working extensively for the district last year, after a judge voided the 2011 appointment of Wanda Quinn to the Zone 1 trustee position. The legality of the Quinn appointment was challenged in court, and a judge determined that the process the district followed in selecting Quinn was illegal.

Ramsden and Lyons billed the district $184,712 for work done last year. Rumpler said 40 percent of that was to review contracts and other legal documents directly related to the bond. Those charges will be paid with bond money rather than from the general fund, as will $46,000 for work performed by the law firm of Hawley Troxell, the district's bond counsel.

Experts say school districts have had to rely more and more on their attorneys over the past few decades.

Benjamin Ferrara, a New York lawyer nationally recognized for his school law expertise, says the public expects, and often demands, far more from its schools than it did 50 years ago.

"Parents' fears for their children's futures translate into increased demands on their schools. Taxpayers' fears for their own futures translate into greater resistance to those demands. Employees jockeying for protection or advantage generate their own demands on the system," Ferrara wrote, in a guide published by the National School Boards Association. "Being Americans, we often take those demands and resistances to court, or to the legislature for redress."

One of the Coeur d'Alene district's bigger ticket legal issues in 2013 was a complaint that was filed against the district with the federal Office of Civil Rights.

Rumpler said privacy laws prohibit her from discussing the allegations.

"All I can say is that we were cleared of it," she said.

That took 46 hours of legal work, which cost the district $8,280.

The district paid attorneys to review and revise the ballot language for the supplemental levy the district put before voters in March.

Then, there are a slew of federal laws that school districts must comply with, many of them requiring legal guidance for compliance. Noncompliance generally jeopardizes a district's eligibility for federal funds.

Rumpler said that in Coeur d'Alene, requests for special accommodations under Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, a federal law designed to protect the rights of people with disabilities, have increased. Those requests require legal evaluation and review, she said.

In addition to the bus privatization issue, the board last year dealt with several other controversial matters of high public interest.

The board's decision last fall to terminate the Primary Years Programme at Hayden Meadows Elementary prompted some parents to file an informal grievance with the district, which Rumpler said attorneys reviewed.

There were several property acquisitions and sales - the Person Field transaction with the city of Coeur d'Alene; the acquisition of the new district office building; and the sale of the Northshire property off Atlas Road.

The smaller Lakeland School District in Rathdrum also saw an increase in its spending on attorney fees last year.

With around 4,000 students, Lakeland spent $9,300 in 2011-12 and $29,000 in 2012-13. Tom Taggart, Lakeland's business and operations director, said the district has budgeted $25,000 for attorneys for this year.

Although it's on a smaller scale, last year's hike in attorney fees in the Lakeland district is similar to what happened in Coeur d'Alene. Last year, voters approved a levy that will finance $4 million in building repairs and other improvements over the next five years, generating the need for contracts and other legal documents.

Spending on attorneys is minimal in the Post Falls district, where roughly 5,600 students attend school. That district spent $3,300 on legal work last year, and $2,000 the previous year.

"We have been very fortunate to not have any legal challenges over the past couple of years. We also have not had to sell any bonds over the last two years. I attribute a good share of it to our staff and our overall risk management efforts," said Post Falls Superintendent Jerry Keane.

For this year, the Coeur d'Alene School District has a new contract with Ramsden and Lyons, with a $10,000 per month retainer.

"We're hoping that new arrangement is going to reduce our legal cost by at least a third," Rumpler said.