No headline

While there are many good reasons to support the upcoming supplemental levy, I want to focus on two.

First, our district provides its patrons with incredible bang for their buck. One example is SAT scores. For the past several years, Idaho has paid for high school juniors to take the Scholastic Aptitude Test, a college entrance exam, and nearly all Idaho juniors take the test. LPOSD students’ average composite score last year was in the top 30 percent in the state. Several of the higher-scoring schools are selective charter schools (such as Coeur d’Alene Charter Academy), and nearly three-fourths of the higher-scoring districts spend more per pupil than LPOSD (some, much more — check out Blaine County and McCall-Donnelly, for example).

Second, our community has a long history of supporting our local schools, passing supplemental levies even before school maintenance and operations funding was removed from our property taxes in 2006. In 2001, the school M&O property tax was 3.22 mills, and voters that year passed a supplemental levy that amounted to 1.07 mills. That supplemental levy provided about 25 percent of the district’s overall budget. Between 2001 and 2005, the school M&O levy rate averaged about 3.1 mills, and the supplemental levy rate averaged just over 1 mill, for a total average of 4.1 mills. Since 2006, the school M&O property tax rate has been zero, and last year’s supplemental levy rate was 1.7 mills. I ask you to continue this tradition of support.

TODD RILEY

Sandpoint