$20 Million Levy Sought For New School, Add-Ons Cda Planning Committee Calls Amount Of Portable Classrooms Pressing Issue

A Coeur d’Alene School District planning committee will ask the school board tonight to consider a $20 million, four-year levy to build a new school and expand two others.

“It’s not exploding growth, but we have pent-up growth,” said Superintendent David Rawls.

“We could fill (a new school) with elementary children right now, and we would still be facing the same need for portable classrooms at the elementary level.”

Approximately 500 students districtwide are taught in portable classrooms. A typical new elementary school holds about 550.

The four-year levy would collect just less than $5 million per year for four years, at approximately $1.65 per $1,000 in property value.

Taxes would not increase, Rawls said, because a new plant facilities levy would replace the current one, which expires this June. That levy was used to build Woodland Middle School, which opens this fall.

The levy would eventually pay for a $5 million elementary school in the northwest part of the district near Ramsey, $2 million in upgrades to Dalton Elementary School (a gymnasium, multipurpose room and classrooms) and complete a $13 million modernization of Coeur d’Alene High. Some students, parents and staff at Coeur d’Alene High are upset that more improvements weren’t made two years ago when the new Lake City High School was built.

Long Range Planning Committee Chairman Jim Faucher said committee members from the community and district have been researching the need for another levy for months. “We feel this gives an excellent blend of what the committee feels the community will tolerate, and the needs of the district,” Faucher said.

The money would first be used to build an elementary school. The Dalton upgrade would come next, with the possibility that Coeur d’Alene High and Canfield Middle School students could also utilize the gymnasium, once complete, Faucher said.

The Coeur d’Alene High School modernization would be the last project, because it is most expensive and taxes must be collected over several years. But Faucher said bringing Coeur d’Alene High School up to par with Lake City is a priority.

“(Principal) Steve Casey has done a wonderful job at Coeur d’Alene High and they certainly need to be taken care of,” Faucher said.

The committee will not ask the board to take action today.

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: LEVY AMOUNT The four-year levy would collect just less than $5 million per year for four years, at approximately $1.65 per $1,000 in property value.