Voting for LPOSD levy is easy

I will be voting “yes” for the supplemental levy without hesitation because the levy is essential to the functioning of LPOSD, because there is no viable financing alternative available, and because faculty and staff have managed to create for students a warm and inviting culture. That culture will only improve with additional counselors. The operations of LPOSD should not be halted without an alternative model on standby.

That said, I suspect some of the angst regarding the levy has more to do with how levy monies are deployed rather than the levy per se. If there are caveats, they rest with the mission itself and the curriculum to support its goals. In an age of technology, science, innovation, mobility, separated families, and globalized supply chains, the LPOSD curriculum looks antiquated. Its stated mission seems to bear little relationship to the needs of a modern curriculum, a gap that grows each year. In order to better fit 21st century realities, LPOSD needs to fundamentally rethink the meaning of public education and redesign its curriculum accordingly.

My favorite indicators to judge the 21st health of a curriculum are its courses in mathematics, physics, computer programming, world and economic history, money and finance, foreign language, engineering education, the availability and integration of online courses, and the creative arts. In some of these, the LPOSD curriculum is thin. On others, we are pretty decent. But on several, we are non-existent. We are losing ground to the frontier and our children will foot the bill in one form or another.

I want to see a spirited public debate on these curricula, a debate that can draw in both students and adults from all persuasions. However, without fundamental reform at LPOSD and within American public K-12 education in general, we will be guilty of keeping our children within the bubble of the quaint world we wish we had rather than mastering an approach to the exacting world in which we actually live.

The annual ritual of the supplemental levy vote always manages to push bigger questions on fundamental reform to the back burner in favor of budgetary tweaking at the margin. The community theatre that ensues only serves only to frustrate those of us who see K-12 education as slipping increasingly into oblique relevance. It is frustrating precisely because we have ability to create a truly world class and modern curriculum. And it is frustrating to no end that a more profound discussion never takes place, sacrificed instead for trivial bickering and tribalism.

PETER KRIZ

Sandpoint