There will be an upcoming vote which will happen on March 14th of this year which will shape what the Lakeland school district future in what services the school will be able to provide and the quality of these services will have going forward. A lot of history is coming back to bite the taxpayers of our fair city as circumstances would have it. “It’s not easy to come up here and ask you to vote for higher taxes.” the Assistant Superintendent Lisa Saxton told the crowd in her first of a series of presentations. Both her and the Superintendent Dr. Becky Meyer hope to make the case nonetheless.
Going into this vote there is quite a bit of history that shapes the how and why these two replacement levies are coming the ballet box and interestingly enough it has to do with two government officials that served very short terms in their respective offices. The first one is Former Governor Jim Risch whom served 6 months being elected May 26 in 2006 and resigned to become the US secretary of the interior. During his short tenure Risch got together with state legislators and change the existing tax laws shifting the burden as Dr. Meyers put it “From the State as a whole to the taxpayers of the district.”
The other important piece of recent history was the Joki act which was passed into state law 2 years ago. Russ Joki was elected in may of 2015 to be the board member of the west Ada board of trustees and whom is raising his two grandchildren and sued the state of Idaho over the constitutionality of the school districts providing ‘free’ education and still having what are called ‘class fees’ These so called class fees equate to students having to pay for their own materials for extra curriculum activities such as buying clay or canvasses for art class or instruments for band class. Idaho Supreme court ruled in favor of this and the school districts across the state have seen deficits in their budgets for what previously the family of the students had provided.
Two replacement levies are on the ballets, called such because the previous levies are expiring and these if passed by a 55% majority will become the new law. When the two sat down with both teachers and volunteers for the first ballet and the parents of the students and what they call ‘stakeholders’ for the second, they spent the entire day coming up with a Plan A, Plan B, and Plan C which is a range of entirely optimal amount of programs, teachers, and repairs they would like to see funded, (which they didn’t bother to calculate as it was a thought experiment to get things started and funding all that would be as Dr. Meyers had said “A pipe dream”) an fiscally responsible plan b which would cover the expected growth which as been previously covered in the Mayor’s State of the City Address, and was the proposal they offered to the board, and a Plan C which will cover the bare necessities though it will leave Lakeland behind when compared to just the other school districts in the pan handle.
Ballot measure 1 is an Instructional/Extra Curricular Supplemental Levy will replace the current which is a one year and it’s replacement will be a 2 year. This will seek to fund ¼ of all the staff in our district along with continuing to fund the current Student Resource Officer in Spirit Lake and Rathdrum and would propose a country position for Athol, Garwood, and Twin Lakes. It will also cover all the band, drama, speech and other programs along with funding for the instrument with maintenance and expand the athletics to also include teaching sports medicine elective and have Athletic trainers on site at both Lakeland and Timber Lake High school to teach it along with providing safety for the students. It will also keep a newer idea, a full day kindergartner class which participants in have seen grade level or higher jump in words, letters, and reading than the half day students. This is just a fraction of what will be covered with the project cost of this levy being $10.01 increase per month.
Ballot measure 2 is the Plant Facility Levy and like it’s counterpart replaces a Levy that is expiring and not adding a new tax. This levy has three different subjects it will address: 1) Building repairs 2) technology upgrades and 3)Transportation needs. The cost of this levy will increase taxes by an estimated 90 cents a month collected over 5 years rather than the previous 1 year levy.
One of the more interesting aspects of the plan is the technology upgrades. They fully admit that they could wait 10 years to investigate upgrading but say that technology moves to fast. Assistant Superintendent Lisa Saxton said during the presentation “Kids are wired differently than the kids I taught 21 years ago.” With these funds they hope to achieve a 1:1 access to technology for students so they can have the edge they need in the future economy, a world where even today you need to be able to communicate ideas with people on the other side of the world. Likewise they would like to finally get ahead of he curve on transportation. “During the regression of 2006 we didn’t replace School buses”
Instead they had kept old buses sending them to be repaired. It was done to spare as much money as they could, and Lakeland was one of the only districts to keep the majority of it’s staff and an anomaly in the state to keep grades at their average as a result. “We are going to get back on track on replacing 3 buses a year.”
The last thing of note is the repairs slated to be done. “There is a trouble spot in (the Lakeland high) school gym.” A priority for not before Basketball starts up again but just kids that play basketball during lunch. Lakeland High school also has a heating problem where it is being disturbed unevenly and there spots where the roof has been leaking and only been temporally fixed. “We want to get that fixed and get a 20 year warranty and hold someone accountable so when it happens again we’ll get it fixed.” the Superintendent was determined about it and more so about it never happening again. Lastly, the two tracks at Timberlake and Lakeland need to be resurfaced.
The two will be doing 2 more presentations with a full breakdown of where the funds come from, where they have came from in the past and where they are going in the future you can watch the presentations at Timberlake Jr. High, Thursday March 2nd, Athol Elementary Thursday, March 7th, and at Twin Lakes Elementary school Thursday March 9th, all of which will start at 6:00 pm. Election date is Thursday March 14th and will open 8 am and close 8 pm. Anyone who is of the age of 18 and resided in Lakeland school district within the last 30 days. If you meet the requirements you can also register to
vote at the polling place as long as you bring in the proper photo identification along with proof of residence such as a utility bill with your name and physical address on it. Kootenai County voters cam find where the pooling place will be or information about absentee ballots which can be requested up to march 3rd at www.kcgov.us/elections/search or calling 208-255-446-1030 and Bonner County voters can do the same athttp://bonnercounty.us/elections/ or by calling 208-255-3631. lastly, the Rathdrum star does not either support or detract this levy, and instead simply factually covers the event and the information provided.
The Rathdrum Sun 
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