The Senate Education Committee has endorsed HB 236, the House-passed bill to allow the Kootenai Technical Education Campus to open a year earlier by starting construction before all the money for the multi-district vocational education center is in from a tax levy. Coeur d'Alene Schools Supt. Hazel Bauman told the senators, "Unfortunately this year, even with Coeur d'Alene's graduation rate of 88 percent, over 100 of our students will drop out this year. ... This is just the ticket for a lot of them. They really would like to be in a professional-technical school learning a trade." Former state Rep. Dean Haagenson, R-Coeur d'Alene, a contractor, also spoke in favor of the bill.

Bauman said the funding plan is similar to how the Coeur d'Alene school district has handled its school plant facility levies. "In every single one of them, we have started construction prior to collecting all the money, and phased the construction ... to match the revenue stream," she said. "Contractors have been happy to do that." The bill now heads for a final vote in the Senate.