SPR s Doug Nadvornick reports.
Voters in north Idaho approved most of the school levies on Tuesday’s ballot, a few by narrow margins.
Two have apparently fallen short. The West Bonner County School District measure has about 46% approval. The Post Falls levy is 33 votes behind out of 2,900 ballots cast.
There are also tight margins in the Boundary County and Lakeland School Districts, but with the opposite result.
In Post Falls, Superintendent Dena Naccarato issued a statement expressing disappointment with such a close loss. The school district has enjoyed overwhelming community support for many years, and we wonder if some of our supporters took the success for granted and did not get to the polls. The levy is fundamental not supplemental, so we owe it to our students to try again in May, she wrote. The money is used to maintain student instructional and extracurricular programming. In addition, we need to remain competitive with our surrounding school districts if we
Credit Courtesy of Coeur d Alene School District
Two Kootenai County school levies are on the verge of being approved, one other is too close to call, if Tuesday night’s results hold.
In the Coeur d’Alene School District, voters have given a two-year, $40 million levy nearly 60% approval, with about two-thirds of the precincts reporting.
A two-year, $19 million levy in the Lakeland School District has 53% support in Kootenai County. The levy is running about 50-50 in Bonner County.
The levy in Post Falls is too close to call. It has a two-vote lead with more than 2,300 votes counted. It’s a two-year, almost $10 million measure.
The Kootenai School District is one of a minority of school districts to comply with Idaho transparency laws.
A report compiled by Idaho Education News showed that approximately 20 percent of school districts comply with website transparency laws set by the state.
The St. Maries and Plummer-Worley School Districts did not meet the requirements.
According to Idaho statutes, charter schools and public-school districts are required to have certain information accessible on their websites.
Information includes budgets and audits, vendor and personnel contracts, monthly expenditures, board meeting agendas and minutes, and strategic plans.
The St. Maries School District does post financial information online. However, it may have been faulted for not having payroll and expenditure reports posted since October and the strategic plan could not be found.