Just in time, voters deliver good news

After a week in which the news has ranged from disappointing to heartbreaking, we needed a lift.

I mean, when you’re swerving from a miners’ strike that will gut-punch an entire county to revelations about a hideous murder that indicate the perpetrator never should have been on the street, well ...

It’s tough to choke down that morning cup of coffee for fear of what you’ll hear next.

So, thank heavens for voters in every last one of our county school districts, citizens who approved healthy supplemental levies by whopping margins.

Let’s hear some applause.

Lord, how we craved a chunk of good news on Tuesday night.

Just how dynamic was the local vote to support education?

Lakeland Joint School District saw a two-year operations and maintenance levy for just under $18 million pass with more than 65 percent of the vote — and that was the LOWEST margin in any of the five county districts.

LOOK, Idaho has a reputation for wretched K-12 education.

Hamstrung by a Legislature that always seems to have other priorities (and plenty of conservatives who are fans of private institutions), the state’s public schools pretty much always rank in the bottom bunch nationally in both spending and achievement.

Labor experts have said again and again that it’s tough to lure forward-thinking companies to Idaho, because the workforce is undereducated for the tech economy of the future.

So how refreshing, how intelligent were those supplemental levy approvals on Tuesday?

Voters in Lakeland, Coeur d’Alene, Post Falls, Plummer-Worley and Kootenai school districts simply stepped up and made this statement: “Education is our future, and we’re willing to pay for it.”

It’s almost a crime that the Legislature won’t do its bit for education in this state, routinely tossing that live grenade to local districts — but wow, what an encouraging sign that voters (not all of whom are parents, remember) simply chucked the grenade back in the direction of Boise.

And by the way, school bond and levy elections are no cinches these days, not with the economy in the hands of a new president and a painful recession still lurking in plenty of minds.

There are reasons to worry.

MAKE NO mistake, Kootenai County residents will have to continue shouldering plenty of the load if our schools are going to be among the best in Idaho — and at least respectable nationally.

If you’re doing push-ups while waiting for significant help from the Legislature, you’ll soon be in fantastic shape.

Or have collapsed from wasted effort.

The political shakers in Idaho believe — for whatever reason — that state government needn’t bother being concerned.

When Boise businessman Tommy Ahlquist visited The Press last week as part of a tour kicking off his run for governor, he answered a question about public education as though someone had snuck him a sour mango.

But Ahlquist gushed about his visit to a local private school, and carried on about its achievements.

No question about where his heart lies, then.

Ahlquist may not win the governorship — he’s a clear underdog, in fact — but no one else in the race is going to give noticeably different answers about our public schools.

And the Legislature is a lost cause.

It’s a shame that big victories like Tuesday’s landslide will have to be repeated again and again at the district level.

At least, though, we know that it’s possible, that Kootenai County gets the message.

That alone is reason to cheer.

For now, anyway.

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Steve Cameron is a special assignment reporter for The Press. Reach Steve via email: [email protected].