Don't miss important appointment

Tuesday is going to be more than a beautiful, warm, late-winter day across Kootenai County. It will also be a time of reckoning for Post Falls and Coeur d'Alene school districts.

Both districts are asking voters for money. In Post Falls, the request is twofold: a facilities bond issue for $19.5 million that requires two-thirds approval for passage, and a $4.655 million per year supplemental levy for maintenance and operations that needs a simple majority of votes to pass. Supplemental levies last two years.

In Coeur d'Alene, the school board has asked patrons to support its supplemental levy request for $15 million a year for two years. With both districts, supplemental levies contribute primarily to staff salaries and benefits. Failure of supplemental levies in Idaho would likely lead to program and personnel cuts because levies represent a substantial portion of many districts' budgets.

If recent history is any indication, Post Falls and Coeur d'Alene have nothing to worry about with their levy requests. In 2011, 64 percent of Coeur d'Alene voters and 65 percent of Post Falls voters said yes. Two years later, Coeur d'Alene got support from 66 percent of its voters and Post Falls from 68 percent.

Our hope is that patrons of these two fine districts study the funding requests earnestly and vote accordingly. The Press has published numerous stories, letters to the editor and other opinion pieces both in print and at cdapress.com. Both districts also offer some basic voter information on their websites.

The Press supports both districts' requests and encourages voters to do likewise. But most of all, we'd like to see greater engagement of patrons and their districts. In the last election cycle, only 5,529 ballots were cast in the Coeur d'Alene School District, which had more than 35,000 registered voters. In Post Falls, a mere 1,449 individuals bothered to vote.

We can do better. On Tuesday, please do your part. Vote.