Board postpones MOU decision

By JUDD WILSON

Staff writer

COEUR d’ALENE — The Coeur d’Alene School District’s trustees tabled a proposed memorandum of understanding with the city of Hayden Monday night. District patrons filled the board meeting room and spoke passionately about the document’s pros and cons before trustee Tom Hearn made a motion to table the MOU for at least 60 days. Trustees unanimously approved Hearn’s motion.

At stake was the future of several elementary schools. The first is the Northwest Expedition Academy located at the old Hayden Lake Elementary School. The second school has no brick and mortar yet, but its advocates professed their belief that it must come into existence. It lives in the hearts of voters who were promised a new elementary school in the northwest of the city during the 2017 bond campaign, they said.

“Every bit of information I helped disseminate to the community during that campaign promised the purchase of land and the building of a school in the northwest to relieve crowding and move students out of unsafe portables,“ said Amy Voeller.

The MOU would have moved the school district closer to exchanging land with the city of Hayden in order to build a new elementary school at the current Northwest Expedition Academy site. To do so, however, seemed to many patrons to be a violation of the bond campaign promise to open a new elementary school in the northwest by fall 2019.

“Do not betray the voters and build outside where you promised. The success of future bonds depends upon that,” said Skyway Elementary parent Christina Linford.

The board voted in February to build at the Hayden site after a long, fruitless search for property in the northwest. However, the district recently acquired property on Prairie Avenue that fit the bill.

Longtime Coeur d’Alene resident Jen Brumley said the new circumstances warranted a new decision. “It is imperative to keep the trust of our voters.”

Proponents of Northwest Expedition Academy sounded concerns that a move to Prairie Avenue would harm their students.

“Our site is an awesome place to educate children,” said principal Bill Rutherford. Its 270 students took 52 expeditions around the community this year, including 25 on foot. That would not be possible at the Prairie Avenue site, he said.

Brianne Weinberger, reading specialist at Northwest Expedition Academy, said “Being part of creating this wonderful environment has been the best thing ever.” She added that when people voted to get students out of the portables in the 2017 bond election, “they voted yes to give them a good education,” which Northwest Expedition Academy offers students.

Rather than pick which location to build at, Hearn suggested that the board use the next 60 days to ascertain whether residents would support a plant facilities levy or bond this fall to fund two new elementary schools, to be opened in fall 2020.

“If we could build two new schools, both of them opening in fall 2020, that would be wonderful. That would meet our needs,” Hearn said.

Board chair Casey Morrisroe cautioned his peers that building costs could again surprise them, as it did when bids for work at Lakes Middle School came in 22 percent over budget this spring. He highly complimented what staff and parents at Northwest Expedition Academy accomplished this last year, and said that their concerns need to take high priority in the decision of where to build.

The contentious board meeting was an auspicious first day on the job for new district superintendent Steve Cook. With a smile, he thanked the packed audience for coming out to welcome him to the district.

Regardless of where it decides to build, Morrisroe said the school board needs to make a decision by its September meeting in order to get new elementary school construction underway.