Solutions sought for NExA

COEUR d’ALENE — It has been more than two years since Bill Rutherford was tasked with creating a new type of school for the Coeur d’Alene School District.

Rutherford and others developed the Northwest Expedition Academy, an elementary school offering project-based learning and incorporating expeditions beyond the school’s walls into lesson plans.

Known as “NExA,” the school opened its doors, with Rutherford as its principal, in the fall of 2017. With NExA housed at Hayden Lake Elementary, a small, antiquated building on Government Way at the intersection of Hayden Avenue, the plan was for NExA to move once a new school could be built with funds from a bond passed in March 2017.

But that hasn’t happened, and Rutherford said to school board members at their meeting Monday night that the school community — comprising 318 students and their families and 54 staff members — still faces the same uncertainty it did when NExA was just being planned.

“We still don’t know. What should NExA look like? Where should it be housed?” Rutherford said. “I’m here to ask for some urgency. Our parents, our staff and our students would really like to know, what does our future look like?”

Rutherford was among several NExA staff members and parents who petitioned school board members for not only an adequate school building, but for adequate staffing.

“We can talk about buildings forever, and we have, literally, talked about buildings forever, and really, what happens inside that building is much more important than the building itself, so I think this ask isn’t something that isn’t unreasonable,” Rutherford said. “I think it’s essential, and I kind of think it’s a crisis. I think it’s something we need to address today.”

Rutherford said NExA was opened with no budget and the understanding that the budget would come when the new school was built.

They had no library books, but they now have a library thanks to donations of more than 5,000 books.

But unlike every other school in the Coeur d’Alene system, NExA doesn’t have a full-time librarian, Rutherford said. NExA has a half-time Title 1 teacher and a half-time advanced learning teacher, Rutherford said, while the rest of the schools in the district have these positions filled full-time.

“I’m asking for equity. I’m asking for our school to have the same resources, the same opportunity that every other school in our district has,” he said.

Jessica Novak, a NExA teacher, said visitors to the school will find limited parking, bricks that sometimes fall from the building, cracked concrete and a field that looks like there was a drought.

Others said there is no room big enough for the entire school body to meet. They noted the cafeteria is too small and the building shakes and creaks.

Rutherford and others asked the school board to bring the school building up to standards, but to also fill it with people who help kids learn.

Last year, the board decided to build a new school for NExA on the Hayden Lake Elementary site, but that plan fell through after parents and others called for the school board to keep a promise it made during a 2017 bond campaign — that it would build a new school in the northwest section of the school district. The Hayden Lake Elementary site is east of U.S. 95.

The school district subsequently purchased land for a new school off Prairie Avenue, west of U.S. 95, and the school board voted unanimously last month to build a new school there that will open in September 2020.

It remains unclear if NExA will move into that building, or if it will serve as a regular elementary school and house students who will likely move into apartment buildings and subdivisions planned nearby.

“We want to stay where we are, if something positive happens to our building this summer, and there is an immediate plan for making our building equitable,” Rutherford said, after the meeting. “If there is no change to our building this summer, we want to move to the Prairie site.”

In the meantime, Rutherford and others want to see improvements to the Hayden Lake Elementary building and a commitment to provide other learning resources.

School board chair Casey Morrisroe said the board and administration have had many conversations about making changes at the existing site of NExA.

“Promises have been made. Promises have been broken,” Morrisroe said.

He proposed a resolution formalizing the board’s commitment to the staff and students at NExA by directing Superintendent Steve Cook to present information and a recommendation “considering the immediate needs of the current NExA facilities, including the costs to improve the conditions of the school and eventually bring the facility up to a standard that meets or exceeds the expectation for school facilities across the district.”

“This (resolution) will let the NExA parents and staff know they are important to us,” Morrisroe said.

Board member Lisa May thanked Rutherford and the others who spoke for bringing the issue of inadequate staffing forward.

“If you guys aren’t being adequately staffed, then we need to know that, and that’s something we should be able to take care of, before any school is opened,” May said. “And I am sorry, truly sorry, if that is happening at your school.”

The resolution, which was passed unanimously, calls for input and feedback from the NExA staff and community, an ongoing discussion of possible long-term solutions for the NExA school and site, and engagement and feedback from the school district’s long-range planning committee.

The resolution also calls for the information and recommendations to be presented to the school board during its first meeting in April.