What to do with Hayden school?

HAYDEN — Once-thriving Hayden Lake Elementary School sits empty.

Coeur d’Alene School District needs more classrooms.

Can the two needs somehow be married? Not if the district follows its long-range planning recommendations.

The district’s trustees have been talking about turning that empty building into a magnet school, an effort that would cost money to get the facility up to inhabitable standards. This week, though, a small but prominent group strongly advised against it.

Steve Casey, John Brumley, Tom Booth and Jerry Anderson all reminded the school board Monday night that the district’s Long Range Planning Committee advised the district last May to sell the property.

“We just want to make sure the money we have to spend goes to the places that most need it,” said Anderson, a member of the committee. “It’s a matter of making the right things happen for the district.”

Anderson made it clear he approached the board as a citizen and was not there to represent the committee in any way. He and his peers reiterated to the board why the Long Range Planning Committee’s proposal should be followed.

In May, the committee outlined priority projects for the district to tackle with the money from a bond issue that could be floated next March.

The priorities, according to the committee, are making renovations and additions to both the high schools — a promise the board made about two decades ago; making renovations and additions to Lakes Magnet Middle School; selling the district’s Thomas Lane property — which the district did; and selling the Hayden Lake site.

The committee also suggested the district buy land and build an elementary school on the northwest end of town, where the district is experiencing its strongest growth.

More than anything, the four men were concerned that turning the Hayden Lake site into a school would take priority over other, much needed projects within the district, like the high school updates.

Brumley was principal of Coeur d’Alene High School for four years and was a co-principal at Lake City High School for one year.

“I think it’s a chapter that needs to be closed and those promises kept and those issues and facilities completed, and then the district can move on,” he said. “Personally I’m not opposed to look at [a magnet school] at some point, but if that comes into play as a plan, something has to go away, and that is a missed opportunity to clean up what is a 22-year-old promise.”

Booth, who sent his children through the district and served on the Viking booster club, told the board Monday that even though the district is in need of a new elementary school, the Hayden Lake site is in the wrong place.

He said the amount of subdivisions that have sprung up over the past few years near where he lives, west of U.S. 95, is incredible.

“It’s time to revisit this side of town instead of Hayden,” he told The Press. “Rather than do Hayden, we need to revitalize both the high schools and look at new land on this [the northwestern] part of town.”

The Board of Trustees will conduct a workshop Monday, Sept. 19, to further discuss options for the Hayden Lake site.

Casey Morrisroe, school board chair, said they’ll discuss whether to open the building or not. If the board decides to open the building, it then has to decide whether a magnet school, for which there are currently three proposals, or a neighborhood school would be best.

“I think we need to pay attention to what [the Long Range Planning Committee] is recommending,” Morrisroe told The Press. “They have spent a lot of time studying our facilities and growth.

“I don’t know if we’ll make a decision Monday night or if we’ll defer it to our October meeting, but in order to make something happen by the start of the school year next year, the administration needs an answer soon.”