Action on high school alignment on May agenda

COEUR d’ALENE — The Coeur d’Alene School District board of trustees will be revisiting the high school alignment equity issue at their May board meeting.

A 2009 and 2019 curriculum audit flagged the differences for graduation requirements and course offering in Coeur d’Alene and Lake City high schools as an important equity issue.

The variance stems from different schedules each high school follows, allowing Lake City High School students to take an additional two classes per semester, graduating with 12 more electives than students at Coeur d’Alene High School.

Because of their schedule, LCHS also offers 67 more courses unique to the school than CHS.

At the February board meeting, trustees asked the district to reach out to the community for feedback rather than vote on schedule alignment between the two high schools to fix the equity issue, or to keep the current schedules.

A three week community engagement with 2,207 participants found that over half of the participants thought it was very important that both high schools have the same graduation requirements, and almost 30% responded that it's somewhat important.

Almost half of the participants felt very strongly that both schools should have similar course offerings including electives, with over 30% responding that it's somewhat important. However, over half of the participants thought it was not important that both high schools operate on the same class schedule.

Through community engagement, the district found the community felt strongly about offering more opportunities for students to take electives at CHS, and not taking that opportunity away from LCHS students. The community also felt strongly that dual credit opportunities should be preserved at all costs, and the students should have access to the same educational opportunities.

Superintendent Shon Hocker said a possible option could be to increase course offerings at Coeur d’Alene High School; however, with the current schedule students don’t have the time to take additional classes. They also could adjust the schedule of Coeur d’Alene High School to something that would allow students to take more classes, and that may be a schedule Lake City High School also is happy about. However whether the schedules align or not doesn’t seem to be as important to the community as the course options and graduation requirements.

Hocker said he thinks they owe it to the community to make a decision at the next board meeting on May 2, as they have been asking questions for a long time. If changes were to happen, it would not take place until fall of 2023.

Board chair Rebecca Smith said the board needs to consider student opportunities, meaningful engagement, class time and dual credit opportunities as they move forward.

“I'm looking forward to our next board meeting in May and the recommendation that will come from the district for us as trustees to consider,” Smith said. “I was encouraged to see that the conversation centered around students and the desire to allow all students to use their high school years to explore passions, interests and next life steps.”

Trustee Casey Morrisroe said since it appeared the majority of the community were more excited about equalizing course opportunities and graduation requirements and less concerned with schedule alignment, his biggest question at this point is whether they can align course offerings and graduation requirements without aligning schedules.

‘That's something I hope we can discuss in May before making a decision,” Morrisroe said. “At this point I'm not sure I see a clear solution. When the board comes together in May we will need to decide if we are ready to move on from schedule alignment or not.”

Morrisroe said if they were to pick a number of required credits between the 12 credit difference between the schools, anything higher than the required 46 credits at CHS would force the school to change its schedule to fit in the extra classes. However, if LCHS students kept their current schedule and only needed 46 versus 58 credits to graduate, they could be ready to graduate in a little over three years of high school.

Trustee Heather Tenbrink said she also found it interesting that a majority of the participants weren’t concerned about schedule alignment between the two high schools, but felt course offerings and graduation requirements should be similar.

“I think there’s some interesting things to look at in terms of kind of focusing on those pieces that much of our community cares a lot about,” Tenbrink said.

Trustee Lesli Bjerke said she also felt trustees needed to focus on aligning the graduation and course requirements.

Hocker said if a change in schedules were to happen, current students would be helped through the transition and shouldn't worry about not being able to graduate.

Assistant Superintendent Libbi Barrett said for kids who want to transfer between the high schools, the district has been able to accommodate most in district transfers. She said enrollment is very similar and they were able to just one-for-one transfer.

“They like their culture, they like their communities, so you don’t have a huge crossover,” Barrett said.

To view the results from the most recent round of community engagement, cdaschools.org/thoughtexchange