School district officials address change, funding

The best way to influence change, according to former Idaho State Sen. Mary Lou Reed, is writing a letter to legislators and putting a stamp on it.

“There’s not a lot going on in the state Legislature because of the concern people are taking on the national level,” she said to about 80 people who attended the Coeur d’Alene School District’s State of the District Wednesday evening. “Get organized and write letters; a well-thought-out letter can never be beat.”

Reed was one of three panel members at Wednesday’s information meeting who spoke on how state funding for Idaho public schools currently works and has changed.

Before the panel discussion, Coeur d’Alene School District Superintendent Matt Handelman and the district’s director of curriculum and assessment, Mike Nelson, gave presentations on the performance of the district’s students and about the district’s bond and levy that will be put to voters in March.

Nelson said the district’s reading scores are some of the highest compared to the top 10 largest school districts in Idaho. However, he said, there’s always room for improvement, noting the school board has discussed the goal of having 100 percent of third-graders reading proficiently at grade-level.

Handelman spoke at length about the ins and outs of the proposed bond and levy, making sure everyone knew that “levies are for learning and bonds are for building.” Also, neither the bond nor the levy will increase property tax rates.

Katy Hancock, a mother whose kids are headed into the school district, said she was grateful for the information, but wished more people were there to hear it.

“It’s nice to know why the levy and the bond are out and what exactly we’re voting for,” she said after the event. “My worry is that a lot of people are unaware that this vote is taking place.”

The panel discussion touched on topics from how the state, not the school districts, controls education funds and the various funding mechanisms school districts have.

John Goedde, a former Idaho state senator and chair of the Senate Education Committee, said school boards misusing money led the Legislature to earmark funds for certain things.

“It’s taken control of those dollars away from local districts,” he said. “In 2008 there were 26 line items. Now there are 41. More and more the Idaho Legislature is saying you have to spend money in a certain manner.”

Don Soltman, a current member of the board, spoke about how the average daily attendance formula for calculating how much state funding each district gets is flawed. He said students are taking more and more online courses and may not always be in the classroom.

He also spoke about when the Legislature switched from funding the state’s general fund with property tax to sales tax.

“It was definitely a shift in how we fund schools,” he said. “Ninety three out of I think 115 districts have supplemental levies. I think we wouldn’t be in that situation if we weren’t under that change.”

Reed chimed in on the topic, too, noting how “fortunate we are here to have a community that will vote for levies and bonds,” but rural communities have a hard time passing them.

She said the state, along with building funds, does not provide funding for early education. The lottery tax doesn’t provide schools with a truly significant amount of funding, but “there are other sin taxes out there,” she said, causing a rumbling chuckle throughout the crowd. “What about liquor or cigarettes?”

Brinnon Mandel has one child in the school district and one more headed that way. She said she appreciated Reed’s comments that the state should also fund early education.

“We had to send our kids to private school out of the district, and I think every family should have access to that,” she said. “Just seeing what it did for our family, everyone should have a right to it.”