Coeur d’Alene Public Schools asks voters for property tax renewal that makes up a quarter of their budget

Voters in the Coeur d’Alene School District are tasked with voting on the two-year continuation of a property tax levy that accounts for around a quarter of the district’s budget.

If passed, the levy would collect $25 million from property owners in the district, at an estimated rate of 93 cents per $1,000 in assessed property value of the levy’s two-year life. It would replace an expiring levy that collected at a 96-cent rate in 2023. The existing levy will sunset in July 2025.

These funds make up a quarter of the school district’s budget, largely allocated towards staffing that the state of Idaho doesn’t fund. There are around 300 employees in the district paid from the levy, including school resource officers, some teachers and school support like paraeducators.

“That includes positions like the resource officers and nurses and all of those folks, and tries to help us have livable wages with our employees as we’re in direct competition with Washington next door,” Superintendent Shon Hocker said.

The levy also pays for some classes in schools, like Advanced Placement courses, electives and remediation courses that aren’t part of the state’s core funding model. It funds the entirety of extracurricular offerings in the district, from high school sports and arts down to the district’s elementary orchestra program.

“I don’t think we have anything that’s over-the-top outlandish opportunities, but we do offer programs like our elementary strings program,” Hocker said. “ I think there’s some great benefit to offering elementary music programs to kiddos early age. We know that generally kids that produce music create a love for music; they also usually perform pretty well in other academic areas, too.”

As the district isn’t held accountable by the state to provide opportunities like elementary strings or other extracurriculars, Idaho doesn’t allot funding for it, Hocker said.

If the levy fails to garner the majority support to pass, Hocker said these extracurriculars would likely be “on the chopping block” for budget cuts districtwide. Other potential cuts Hocker listed include closing as many as four of the district’s 16 schools and laying off the approximately 300 staff members funded by the levy.

“Just like in our household budgets, if you lost a quarter of your budget, you’re gonna have to make some big decisions, and we will have to do the exact same thing,” Hocker said. “I can’t promise today exactly that path that will require community input. That will require the board to vote and make a decision, but what I can say is what’s at stake is a quarter of everything we do.”

Hocker paints a “bleak picture” of the effects of such cuts. Class sizes will increase with fewer staff, and they may have to close some schools by default without enough employees to run them.

“It’s uncharted territory,” Hocker said.

Operating without a levy may be foreign for Hocker, but a failed levy isn’t. In March of last year, the district presented voters with a perpetual levy of $25 million. That failed by around 2%, prompting the district to send to voters a successful two-year levy instead.

Idaho limits the lifespan of school levies, which can only be run for one or two years or in perpetuity. Presenting Coeur d’Alene voters with a levy renewal biannually is brewing some “levy fatigue” among voters, Hocker said.

In March this year, the district’s board of trustees voted to close Borah Elementary to help rectify a $6 million budget shortfall – a decision not made lightly, Hocker said.

“That was to try to rectify our budget by about $6 million. If we have to do the same thing for $25 million, you can imagine that’s four times worse,” Hocker said.

Hocker is “cautiously optimistic” in the levy’s success and avoiding the “painful decisions” of cutting a fourth of their budget. Part of that optimism comes from a lack of opposition from the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee, which has in the past been vocal opponents of Coeur d’Alene’s tax propositions.

“I can’t feel overly confident until Wednesday, when the election is over,” Hocker said. “I’ve got to be prepared for both case scenarios in the event we have to go down either one of those two roads.”