Fight is on for educational control

Few things are harder to do than volunteer to give away your money without directly getting anything tangible in return.

Yet for years now, that's what local voters have done. They've volunteered to support their public school levy requests because they understand those dollars will pay off in the long run — for the students, their parents, their communities.

That success story added a sad chapter Tuesday, when Post Falls' supplemental levy request failed and Lakeland's barely survived. As documented in Friday's editorial, turnout for this March election was much higher than ever. Cautioning that concluding too much in an unprecedented, pandemic-poxed year is unwise, differences are discernible.

Kootenai County's population is being augmented by some newcomers who believe they have no real stake in local public education. Until they see the importance of these "supplemental" funding necessities, these relatively recent arrivals are fresh meat for those who would harvest their political hearts.

Kootenai County Republican Central Committee, that's you. Posing as the voice of conservatism, KCRCC is actually the scream of extremism.

Prior to the Tuesday election, KCRCC acolytes were knocking on doors and handing out anti-levy fliers. Appropriately, the fliers contained multiple grammatical errors, even misspelling Kootenai County Republican Central Committee. They encouraged voters to "just say no to higher property taxes, social justice agendas, Marxist indoctrination and more union control."

For the vast majority of citizens, property taxes will not increase with passage of any of the levies. Fears of social justice agendas and Marxist indoctrination are merely the manifestations of paranoid minds, not products purchased through levy funding. And unless somebody is siphoning off tax dollars to bolster the cash box of the Idaho Education Association (hint: nobody is), that claim also is patently false.

If KCRCC simply came out and said they oppose public education and citizens could save a few bucks by crippling their schools, at least that would be honest. Boneheaded, but honest.

One levy election isn't the endgame for KCRCC. Emboldened by winning two seats on the North Idaho College Board of Trustees last November and, most likely, by the Post Falls levy failure, the committee will most certainly be targeting school board elections this fall to gain a firm grip on the controls of public education. Any candidate not cowering beneath the long shadow of Karl Marx — or is it Groucho? — will face KCRCC's wrath. And this approach might well extend to city council elections, too.

If the KCRCC today is celebrating its impact on Tuesday's vote, the damage goes further than a small band of extremists hurting our neighborhood schools for the next two years. The celebration could be because the makeup of our community really is changing.