EDITORIAL: Keep schools strong without a tax increase

Maybe someday Idaho will properly fund public education.

Until then, school district officials and supporters must go to taxpayers, over and over again, with their hands out just to cover essential expenses. 

In the Nov. 5 election, 24 counties across the state will be asking taxpayers for a combined $224 million, a tab the state should be covering. That tally includes four local requests, two-year replacement levies for the following school districts:

Coeur d’Alene School District, $50 million ($25 million per year for two years).

• Teacher and staff benefits and salaries ($19.3 million)

• Additional student classes, including AP, electives, and CTE ($12.2 million)

• Sports and extracurricular activities ($4.1 million)

• School safety and security ($3.8 million)

• School operating expenses ($3.4 million)

• School health services ($2.8 million)

• School and classroom resources ($2.2 million)

• Technology ($2.2 million)

Lakeland Joint School District is seeking $19 million ($9.5 million per year for two years). If approved, $12 million is for staff salaries and benefits, about $3 million for extracurriculars and athletics, and the remainder for transportation, safety and security needs, and curriculum. 

St. Maries Joint School District is seeking $4.14 million ($2.07 million a year for two years), providing funding for extracurricular programs, UpRiver Elementary, CTE programs, advanced classes, electives, Heyburn preschool program, and student support staff (like bus drivers, librarians, and teachers’ aides.

Kootenai Joint School District, based in Harrison, is asking voters for $2.7 million ($1.35 million per year for two years). Of that $2.7 million, $1.45 million would go to staff salaries and benefits. The rest would support special education, the school resources officer, building maintenance, athletics, and CTE classes. 

All four of these requests will simply continue to pay existing expenses, primarily involving personnel. And in all four districts, taxpayers’ rates should not increase; in some they might even go down slightly with passage of the levies.

Failure of these levies inevitably leads to layoffs of teachers and other key personnel. Sports and other extracurricular activities would suffer severely or be eliminated altogether. Because these supplemental/replacement levies provide up to 25% of a school district’s budget, failure at the polls would have serious, perhaps devastating, local impacts.

While legislators pat themselves on the back for allegedly keeping taxes low, they’re simply shifting much of the state's financial responsibility to local levels. Until that changes, it’s up to each community to make up the funding gap.

A simple majority of Yes votes on your school district's supplemental levy request will accomplish that.