Lakeland drops tuition

The Lakeland Joint School District will no longer charge tuition for out-of-district students. In the past, out-of-district families paid $40 a month for their kids to attend the district’s schools.

The district’s administrators got word that Idaho Statutes 33-1402 and 33-1405 regarding tuition are not as clear-cut as once thought and the district asked its attorneys to look into it.

Assistant superintendent Lisa Sexton said the attorneys’ interpretation is the district can either collect Average Daily Attendance funding from the state, or charge tuition, but not both.

At the Aug. 8 board meeting, the Board of Trustees voted to discontinue charging tuition.

“Our administrators brought the issue to us that the state law that directs the districts on how to conduct tuitions is kind of in conflict with itself, so there’s not a unified perception of what allows districts to charge tuition,” said Board Chair Larry Brown. “To avoid that conflict...we just waived charging tuition.”

Though the Lakeland district is no longer charging tuition for out-of-district students, it still requires an application process. Students have to provide an application and attendance, behavioral and academic records. The district will still only accept out-of-district students if there is space in the schools and the schools already have the services required by the incoming student.

“Our board is very concerned about allowing so many kids into our district,” Sexton said. “They just want to be very careful that we don’t create a situation where we’re asking our local taxpayers to fund education for kids who live in a different district and are paying taxes to a different district.”

The Coeur d’Alene School District never seriously considered charging tuition for out-of-district students, but the topic did come up last spring when the district was facing enrollment issues. The district is not currently accepting any new students transferring into the district. Out-of-district students already attending Coeur d’Alene schools have been allowed to continue transferring in.

“There are a lot of moving parts to our open enrollment and our magnet policies, and in some ways that was just another part that would make the conversation more complex with already complex issues,” Coeur d’Alene School District Superintendent Matt Handelman said. “Especially with Lakeland going back, I don’t know if our board will want to entertain [tuition]. We haven’t set a date to talk about it again.”

Every August, the State Department of Education sends districts a notification telling them how much money they can charge for tuition if they choose to do so. Based on this letter, the Lakeland District has charged tuition for out-of-district students for decades without any major problems, according to the district’s previous superintendent Brad Murray when he spoke with The Press in April.

However, Sexton pointed out, the district hasn’t charged out-of-district families nearly the amount the state allows. The letter received by the Public School Finance Department this August said the district could charge $240 per month for out-of-district elementary students and $268 per month for secondary students.

“We were well below that,” Sexton said.

Sexton also said the State Department of Education will be working with state legislatures to clarify the statutes in question.