Levy funds help retain top teachers

POST FALLS — The mission statement of the Post Falls School District is: “All students will have the attitudes, skills and knowledge to be productive and responsible citizens.”

Post Falls School District serves 5,900 students in 12 schools — a developmental preschool, seven elementary schools, two middle schools, a traditional high school and an alternative high school.

Its fleet of nearly 50 buses travels more than 350,000 miles a year to carry students to and from destinations across a landscape of city streets, woodsy neighborhoods, prairie lands, river views and forested hills.

Athletics and other programs are highly celebrated throughout a school community vibrant with orange and black Trojan school colors, and dedicated educators known for sticking around long enough to teach generations of students.

“We’re kind of a huge family in Post Falls,” Superintendent Dena Naccarato said in a recent meeting with The Press editorial board.

This community will be asked on March 9 to vote on a $4.955 million-per-year replacement supplemental levy that will provide the Post Falls School District with $9.91 million over two years. It will take the place of the current levy that expires on June 30. These funds account for about 7.5% of the district’s budget.

The proposal, if approved, will not increase school district taxes of the average Post Falls taxpayer.

Post Falls’ tax rate is $1.70 per $100,000 assessed value, so individual tax bills vary depending on home value and location.

The district has posted on its website, www.pfsd.com, a school tax bill example comparison for the years 2019 and 2020. A homeowner with a taxable assessed value of $230,000 in 2019 paid $477.08 in ’19. In 2020, even with an increase of $13,360 bringing the taxable assessed value to $243,360, the school tax bill was $412.53.

“Our district taxes are actually decreasing, and they’re decreasing because obviously school districts asked for a flat amount, even though our levy rate is the lowest around,” Naccarato said.

These funds pay for staffing, transportation and programming needs. Post Falls needs two or three new buses a year, and each bus costs more than $100,000. Student services, school resource officers and nursing staff are also supported by levy funds.

Post Falls does not have an officer or nurse in every building, but the district did recently hire one more nurse in the midst of the pandemic.

“It makes sense during COVID,” Naccarato said. “We have six nurses for a district of 6,000 students.”

Between retirement and people leaving to work in Washington, Post Falls annually experiences about a 10% turnover rate. Levy funds help keep talented teachers in the district, Naccarato said, and Post Falls does have a legacy of longevity.

“We’ve made it a priority to make sure that every employee knows that we care about them and that we treat them well,” Naccarato said.

However, attracting and retaining teachers is difficult for all school districts in North Idaho because neighboring Washington offers much higher salaries. Naccarato said salary funds from the state cap around $50,000 per year. Post Falls’ highest-paid teachers make about $69,000 per year. All that extra money is funded out of the district’s general fund.

“A third of our teaching population is in that, all the way over on our salary matrix, making as much as nearly $69,000 a year,” Naccarato said. “We simply would not be able to find any teachers if the three districts were using the state salary schedule. We wouldn’t be able to find and retain teachers, so we all pay on our own salary schedules.”

Voters in Post Falls have approved levies for the district for more than 30 years. Trustee Michelle Lippert, who has served on the school board since 1999, said she's confident voters will support the levy because of the “level of trust we’ve established in the community.”

“The reputation we have in the community is very strong, and it’s consistent,” she said. “It’s been like this for well over 20 years. I think that consistency and that trust would be one of the reasons that our voters would vote in favor of the levy.”

Obviously, Lippert said, this levy is necessary.

“It’s incredibly important — the technology piece, the transportation, supplementing salaries, the nurses, paying to have those nurses in our buildings,” she said. “Those are incredibly important things. Our students need them. They deserve the best, and we’re working hard to give them the best.”

Naccarato said that without the levy funds, “something will have to go.”

“It’s not supplemental. It’s fundamental,” she said. “We absolutely have to have this money in order to continue the current operating status that we have right now, with our current staffing and our current offerings. Without it, we can’t do that.

“We ask for what we need. We don’t ask for bells and whistles. We are fiscally conservative, and I think our voters appreciate that.”