New Lakes school on ballot

This time, if voters approve it, the Coeur d’Alene School District vows it will be built.

Voters on May 20 are being asked for the third time to approve funding to rebuild Lakes Middle School.

They already did once – in 2002. A major renovation of the 56-year-old school was one of several projects folded into a 2002 School Plant Facilities Levy.

Cost overruns on the other projects, including construction of Atlas Elementary, ate into the funds earmarked for Lakes Middle School, though. The district saved the money that was left and went back to voters for the difference.

After voters rejected a $40 million levy in 2006, the district came up with a new proposal: A $31.1 million levy that would fund construction of a brand new Lakes Middle School, the district’s 11th elementary school, help purchase property for future schools and improve technology throughout the district.

Originally built as a high school, Lakes’ classrooms are 600 square feet, compared with 900-square-foot classrooms in the district’s newer elementary schools.

There’s no access for disabled people to the second story, and the giant boiler used to heat the school contributes to a power bill that’s $35,000 higher annually than bills at the district’s other middle schools.

The two-year levy would increase a homeowner’s taxes an estimated $1.60 a year per every $1,000 of a home’s assessed value.

Superintendent Harry Amend said the district’s current tax rate of $1.15 per $1,000 of home value is one of the lowest rates among Idaho school districts.

“When we pass (the levy), it will still be well below the state average,” Amend said.

The new middle school would be built behind the existing Lakes Middle School, funded by about $19 million from the levy and $4.5 million in leftovers from the 2002 levy.

When construction is complete, the old school would be demolished and replaced with parking.

The levy would also include $7.9 million for a new elementary school to ease crowding in the northwest area of the district, Assistant Superintendent Hazel Bauman said. The school would be built at Nez Perce and Atlas Roads on property the district owns.

The schools on the north side of the district are so full that the district is busing about 200 students to other schools, Bauman said.

“We’re squishing them into portables. We’re squishing them into nooks and crannies,” she said.

In anticipation of future growth, the district plans to spend $2.4 million buying property on which to build another middle school, the district’s third high school and yet another elementary within the next decade.

“Property in Kootenai County is not going to get cheaper, and it’s not going to get more available,” Bauman said.

At a public forum Tuesday evening, more than 200 people crowded into the Lakes Middle School cafeteria for a presentation on the levy. A question-and-answer session scheduled to last an hour stretched into late evening.

Concerned taxpayer Carol Morgan said the fact that the district didn’t use the money budgeted from the prior levy to build Lakes as proposed created mistrust among voters.

“My philosophy will be, as your next superintendent, that if we levy $23.6 million to build Lakes, we’ll spend $23.6 million or less to build Lakes,” said Bauman, who is replacing Amend when he retires at the end of the school year. “We will build it at the price we promise you as taxpayers.”

Jim Keizer questioned why the district doesn’t just remodel Lakes Middle School instead of tearing it down and building new.

“I look at this school, and it has real good bones to it,” Keizer said.

District officials say remodeling would actually cost more and not solve a number of problems the district hopes to fix by building a new school.

Amend said Spokane school officials had the same conversation about Rogers High School.

A new school could have been built for less than $40 million, but for reasons including sentimental value, the district opted for a major renovation with additions.

The project exceeded its budget and is at $65 million, he said.

“That’s not what I’d call a close call,” Amend said.