New high school on horizon

POST FALLS — The time has come for the city to look at building a second high school.

That's the word from Post Falls Superintendent Dena Naccarato, addressing the City Council Tuesday night.

Sticker shock alert: It's a “big ticket item,” Naccarato said.

The new building will come with a price tag of about $55 million. That cost is for a “starter school” that will accommodate about 1,000 students initially, she said.

In 2018, the long range facility plan was revised, and is revisited every five years, Naccarato said. The group reviewing the plan includes parents, administrators and teachers. The determination was to focus on building a new high school when Post Falls High reached 1,750 students. It currently has 1,729 students enrolled.

The review board also proposed to look at building a second middle school in 2022 and to build a new elementary school immediately, which they did. Treaty Rock Elementary School opened last year, according to plan.

When the plan was revised, the one thing no one was expecting was COVID, Naccarato said.

District enrollment was 6,100 prior to COVID and dropped to 5,800 during the pandemic, Naccarato said.

“We’re back to school as normal, pre-COVID normal, this entire school year,” Naccarato said. “We increased our enrollment to pre-pandemic levels.”

Post Falls Middle School has 888 students enrolled, River City Middle School has 650, and all of the elementary schools are sitting at about 400 students each. The elementary schools are designed for about 550.

The district owns a 60-acre parcel near McGuire and Prairie, Naccarato said. Part of that would be used for the new high school.

“The idea is to keep the high school away from major population centers,” she said. “When Post Falls High School was built in 1999 and 2000, there was nothing out there. Now there’s houses all around and it’s causing some problems with traffic and that kind of thing at certain times of the day.”

The bond used to build Post Falls High School was taken out in 1998. Cost: $18 million.

Schools in Idaho are built by voter approval. A supermajority must approve the expenditure. The good news is that the impact for local homeowners won't be exorbitant, Naccarato said.

“Right now our bond underwriter is estimating that it will cost about $32 per $100,000 (of home value,)” Naccarato said. “So if your house is worth $500,000, it will cost about $160 a year.”

A survey was distributed by the school district and the Post Falls Chamber of Commerce last week to local residents, Naccarato said. Though the window to return the questionnaire is still open, the district has received a lot of responses.

“For us it was a one-question survey: Would you support a second high school?” Naccarato said. “In that survey you can click on a link and it takes you to see your tax impact. Right now that survey is running 90% yes, that people would approve it.”

Naccarato said many people ask her why the school district doesn’t collect impact fees. Idaho code does not allow school districts to collect impact fees, she said.

Naccarato praised the “good working relationship” the school district has enjoyed with the city and developers.

“What I mean is that the city has welcomed us to the table when big developers are coming into our town,” Naccarato said. “In most cases the developers have offered the district 10 acres of land to build an elementary school.”

Comparing the “minimal amount of money” accumulated by impact fees to the receipt of free land from developers, the relationship between the city, developers and the school district has “done wonders for lowering the tax bill for our citizens,” Naccarato said.

Councilman Nathan Ziegler asked if the plan for the new high school will include a sports complex. Naccarato said it includes a sports complex, an auxiliary gym and an auditorium. The plan would also allow for expansion in the future.

“I think everybody is aware that we’ve always had a history of only asking for only what we need,” Naccarato said. “So that is the goal behind building a smaller high school. It will also give us the opportunity, if we need it, to get creative with the middle school in the meantime.”

Anytime the city undertakes a development project or an annexation, many organizations including the school district are consulted, said Mayor Ron Jacobson.

“Know that we are listening to the school district,” he said.