Trustees Wednesday voted to end the college’s contract with Gregory South, hired as interim president in December 2022, Kaye Thornbrugh of the Coeur d’Alene Press reported.

South’s tenure in the president’s office was short, and illustrative of the politics on a divided NIC board.

On a 3-2 vote, the board hired South as interim president, giving him an 18-month contract. That came after the board placed President Nick Swayne on paid administrative leave.

Within a matter of months, a judge ordered NIC to reinstate Swayne. But while Swayne returned to the president’s job, South remained on the payroll as well.

South still ranks as NIC’s highest-paid employee — for now — at a salary of $235,000. Swayne makes $230,000 per year.

Meanwhile, the board took no action Wednesday on another matter: a judge’s order to turn over an investigative report to Swayne. The report examines claims by a former employee, who accused Swayne of “retaliatory treatment and retaliatory discharge,” Thornbrugh reported.

On a 3-2 vote Wednesday, the board assigned legal counsel to resolve the open records issue in the most “cost effective and prudent” way possible, Thornbrugh reported.

State Board of Education members spent Monday defending their closed-door discussions of the University of Idaho-University of Phoenix megadeal.

And at one point, State Board member Kurt Liebich worked in a defense of the deal itself. As one of the first State Board members who had access to Phoenix’s proprietary data, Liebich said he quickly could see the urgency in pursuing the huge but tarnished for-profit online giant.

“I saw how much value was there,” Liebich said during virtual testimony in a Boise courtroom. “(It’s) inconceivable to me that (this) wouldn’t be a highly competitive process.”

The Ada County district court trial represents one of the biggest obstacles to the $685 million Phoenix purchase — a deal that could provide U of I with millions of dollars in new revenue, or leave the U of I on the hook for up to $10 million a year. The trial poses a public challenge to the State Board, and one of the largest and most polarizing decisions in the volunteer policymaking body’s history. And the case is thick with intraparty political tension: Attorney General Raúl Labrador’s June lawsuit targets an eight-member board tightly aligned with Gov. Brad Little.

At its heart, however, the civil case centers on the state’s open meetings law.

The State Board discussed the Phoenix purchase in three executive sessions, on March 22, April 25 and May 15. The third and final closed-door meeting took place just three days before the State Board held its only public meeting on the purchase, and voted unanimously to give the transaction the green light. Labrador’s lawsuit contends that the State Board failed to do its homework, and simply took the U of I’s word that other competitors were in the running for Phoenix.

Testimony from three State Board members Monday didn’t stray too far from the board’s established narrative:

• They again said they put their faith in Jenifer Marcus, a deputy attorney general who has been assigned to the State Board for several years. Marcus counseled the board on the closed meetings — held under a little-used legal exemption covering a transaction that pits a state agency against a public bidder from another state or nation. “I have the utmost trust in our deputy attorney general,” board member Shawn Keough said. “I took her professional word for it.”
• They said they still considered the University of Arkansas a potential suitor for Phoenix, even after that state’s board of regents rejected a purchase on April 24. In a closed executive session the following day, U of I President C. Scott Green urged board members not to count out Arkansas. Said Liebich, “I still in my mind believed that Arkansas was a potential competitor.”
• And even under repeated questioning, they still did not name any other would-be suitors. For months, the U of I and the State Board have not identified other potential buyers — and based on Monday’s testimony, board members seemed to have only cursory information about the competition. “There was never a number,” state superintendent Debbie Critchfield said, “but at every point it was explained we were a competitor in the process.”

Attorneys on both sides tried to press the boundaries of the open-meetings case.

Twice, deputy attorney general Gregory Woodard tried to bring up Phoenix’s $191 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, over complaints of deceptive advertising. The settlement, he argued, made Phoenix less attractive to any would-be buyer. Twice, defense attorney Trudy Hanson Fouser objected.

Fouser — the State Board’s appointed outside attorneys — said in her opening statement that she planned to point out Phoenix is turning a profit. These financials are just one reason why the board had every reason to believe the Phoenix bidding was competitive.

District Judge Jason Scott sought to rein in both attorneys. He wouldn’t allow Woodard to expand on the FTC case, but said he wouldn’t allow Fouser to bring up Phoenix’s financial health.

“We’re not litigating the wisdom of the deal,” Scott said at one point.

Despite the limited scope, Monday’s hearing got off to a laborious start. Keough, Liebich and Critchfield were each on the stand for about an hour or more — spending most of that time fielding questions from Woodard.

Then the afternoon proceedings came to a sudden end.

During Critchfield’s cross-examination, Woodard abruptly asked for a recess, saying he had become ill. After the recess, both attorneys wrapped up their questioning of Critchfield, then the trial adjourned for the day. The unexpected adjournment left at least two prominent witnesses on hold: State Board member David Hill had been called to testify Monday, but was left waiting outside the courtroom; and Green’s testimony was also on hold.

Woodard has already indicated he will call several other witnesses, including State Board executive director Matt Freeman, U of I attorney Kent Nelson, and Brady Hall, an attorney for Gov. Brad Little.

The trial is scheduled to run through Wednesday. It’s not immediately clear whether Monday’s abridged session will affect the schedule.

This is not a jury trial, and at the end of the case, Scott is expected to make his ruling.

The trial is a big hurdle to the Phoenix deal; Labrador’s team wants Scott to nullify the State Board’s vote endorsing the purchase.

But it isn’t the sole hurdle. The U of I’s accreditors still have to approve the deal, and a U of I-affiliated nonprofit still has to secure financing for the purchase.

U of I officials have said they hope to close the deal early this year. If the deal isn’t closed by May 31, either party could opt out.

Check back all week for complete trial coverage.

More reading: Check out our special, in-depth coverage of the University of Idaho-University of Phoenix proposal.

Especially when those records pertain to public spending.

But this time, we’ve decided to pay — reluctantly. And selectively.

As you might recall, we’ve been going back and forth with the University of Idaho for months on public records requests, and the U of I’s attempts to bill EdNews.

Bear in mind, the U of I doesn’t have to send us an invoice. State law allows public agencies to bill for labor costs exceeding two hours. But state agencies aren’t required to do this, and many don’t.

Here’s where we stand with the U of I:

Phoenix-related invoices. EdNews has asked the U of I for all invoices related to the proposed purchase of the University of Phoenix. On Jan. 10, the U of I said it would cost $88.65 just to compile these bills.

“Once you have paid the estimate and we have identified and gathered the responsive documents and better understand the volume of records that would need to be reviewed, we will be able to provide you with a further estimate for us to review the responsive records,” Karl Klein of the U of I’s office of general counsel wrote.

Emails to and from legislators. On Jan. 8, EdNews requested emails, texts and other written communications with legislators. We narrowed the request to the two agencies most likely to have newsworthy contact with elected lawmakers: President C. Scott Green’s office, and the office of government affairs. The U of I said it would need to review a whopping 1,374 “potentially responsive records,” at a cost of $815.01.

‘Project Neptune.’ Since November, we have been requesting emails, texts and other public records containing the words “Project Neptune,” a code name for Phoenix. When we requested records from four departments — Green’s office, the provost’s office, the office of general counsel and the division of finance and administration — we received a $2,370.95 invoice.

We narrowed this request to Green’s office, and received a $344.23 invoice. And that’s just the cost to “review all the emails to determine their size, including the number of pages of any attachments,” Klein wrote. Here again, the actual bill for the records could prove to be higher.

On Wednesday, EdNews paid $88.65 for the Phoenix-related invoices.

We still believe the emails and the “Project Neptune” documents are in the public interest. We continue to oppose the U of I’s billing practices — which delay and dissuade public records requests.

But we also don’t like the idea of walking away just because we’re hitting some resistance. That runs counter to the tenets of watchdog journalism: reporting that holds public agencies accountable to the public.

We believe the Phoenix invoices could give us — and give Idahoans — some insight into the behind-the-scenes costs of a proposed $685 million purchase. Even though U of I officials insist Phoenix will be a moneymaker, the public still has a right to follow the dollars. Their dollars. The public has a right to know who’s already making money on this transaction.

We’re committed to telling that story. Even if we have to spend some of our own money to chase it.

More reading: Click here for our in-depth coverage of the proposed Phoenix purchase.

The work comes a week before the U of I follows through on a controversial plan to raze the house.

It’s unclear what prosecutors are doing at the house, which is located on King Road, near the U of I campus. The defense team accessed the house last week, taking measurements and photographs.

“Both prosecution and defense asked for access to the house and have both gone into the house in the last two months,” the U of I said in a news release today. “Neither has asked for the house to be retained and U of I will proceed with demolition.”

That demolition is scheduled for Thursday, Dec. 28.

Four U of I students — Ethan Chapin, 20, of Mount Vernon, Wash.; Kaylee Goncalves, 21, of Rathdrum; Xana Kernodle, 20, of Post Falls; and Madison Mogen, 21, of Coeur d’Alene — were stabbed to death in the house on Nov. 13, 2022. Bryan Kohberger, a former Washington State University student, has been charged with first-degree murder in connection with the slayings.

No trial date has been set.

Shanon Gray, an attorney for the Goncalves family, has repeatedly asked the U of I to delay razing the house, the Idaho Statesman has reported.

“This is one of the most horrific crimes in the history of Idaho, and the University of Idaho wants to destroy one of the most critical pieces of evidence in the case — and it is also important to make note that there is now a demolition date before there is even a trial date set,” Gray said in a statement to the Statesman.

The house was donated to the U of I in February.

Wednesday night, these same trustees bickered over Mike Waggoner’s authority.

On a 3-2 vote, the board granted Waggoner blanket decisionmaking powers over litigation, the Coeur d’Alene Press reported.

The divided vote — and the heated board debate — came just two days before NIC will find itself in court, fighting against its president. Nick Swayne sued the college in November, demanding a copy of an investigative report. Swayne says the report outlines allegations made against him by a former NIC employee, Kaye Thornbrugh of the Coeur d’Alene Press has reported.

Waggoner confirmed that Wednesday’s board action was related to Swayne’s lawsuit, Thornbrugh reported.

Wednesday’s vote split the NIC board along familiar ideological lines. The board’s conservative bloc — Todd Banducci, Greg McKenzie and Waggoner — supported the move. Tarie Zimmerman and Brad Corkill opposed it, Thornbrugh reported.

“The day is going to come when somebody in this community will have had a gut full of this silliness and there will be a lawsuit filed,” Corkill said, according to Thornbrugh’s story on the meeting.

Waggoner argued that the change will eliminate the need for trustees to convene to discuss lawsuits, Thornbrugh reported.  “We have two opinions here and counsel is telling us it’s fine and we’ve done it before and having too many people involved is unworkable.”

This year marks the 25th anniversary of charters in Idaho. Read about their history, successes and challenges. 

Director Tony Bonuccelli well remembers his first day on the job — and the school’s worst year.

Bonuccelli was hired in 2013 to lead Idaho’s first charter — Moscow Charter School, established in 1998. Its focus is technology and arts with a mission to build a culture of support in a small-school environment.

Fulfilling the mission of Moscow Charter wasn’t a concern for Bonuccelli on his first day — it was the pig.

A pig wandered onto the playground so students couldn’t go outside for recess. Sharply dressed in a suit and tie, Bonuccelli unsuccessfully tried for hours to persuade the reluctant sow to leave.

“I won’t forget that day,” he said.

He also won’t forget one of the school’s low points, recovering from a cut in school funding and an unfinished financial audit nearly bankrupted the school in 2013.

But they survived the pig, the audit and the financial struggles. MCS started with 31 students in 1998; today the K-8 school has 193 students.

“I think it’s just amazing what our culture is and I’m really proud to be part of it,” said Bonuccelli.

“Financial problems are the main reason charters close,” said Leslie Baker, MCS board chair. “We basically had a year to get our (finances) in shape or … it was quite clear that if we couldn’t handle the money correctly and account for it correctly, then we were not going to be open for much longer.”

Around that time, Bonuccelli gave up his job in Washington as a band director and took over as school leader. “As I was coming into this position, our treasurer said to me, ‘Well, you got three years to turn this around or you’re shutting the doors. so I started recruiting, getting people to send their child here, explaining what charters are about and the differences,” Bonuccelli recalled.  

“Leslie and I have been through a lot together,” he said.

More than 20 years later, the school still embraces technology, like using virtual goggles in the classroom or designing structures protected from ultraviolet rays in science class. 

“We keep our eyes open for the newest technology,” Baker said. “We recognized that technology and arts were important, and we still do.”

In Paul Collins’ middle school science class, students showed off their crystal trees made of cardboard with blooms of colorful crystals grown from a solution of household items like ammonia, laundry bluing and salt, and tinted with food coloring, a project that connects art to science. 

“It reinforces that it is not science versus art. Education is about uniting all the disciplines,” Collins said. 

Baker said, “I feel really proud to have been a part of this. Idaho has allowed families to choose schools that best fit their needs.”

The off-campus home on King Road will be demolished on Dec. 28, the U of I said in a news release Thursday.

“While we appreciate the emotional connection some family members of the victims may have to this house, it is time for its removal and to allow the collective healing of our community to continue,” President C. Scott Green said in the news release.

Four U of I students — Ethan Chapin, 20, of Mount Vernon, Wash.; Kaylee Goncalves, 21, of Rathdrum; Xana Kernodle, 20, of Post Falls; and Madison Mogen, 21, of Coeur d’Alene — were stabbed to death in the house on Nov. 13, 2022.

The house was donated to the U of I in February, and university officials have long planned to tear down the building. Some family members of the victims have urged the U of I to keep the building intact until the first-degree murder case against former Washington State University student Bryan Kohberger goes to trial. No trial date has been set. (More coverage on the case from the Idaho Statesman.)

While the U of I set a date for the demolition Thursday, Kohberger’s defense team was combing the crime scene.

The defense team is taking photographs and measurements at the house, and might take drone footage, the U of I said Thursday. This work could continue into Friday.

U of I officials had said they planned to demolish the house some time after fall semester, which ends this week.

“The decision to tear down the house during winter break was made as an attempt to decrease further impact on the students who live in that area,” the U of I said in its news release.

It also means the demolition is scheduled to take place nearly a year to the day after Kohberger’s Dec. 30, 2022 arrest in Pennsylvania.

PRIEST RIVER, Idaho —The moms seated at the conference table on Election Day were worried. They had good reason: Their poll watchers at voting sites — grange halls on dirt roads, community centers hardly larger than a bungalow— suggested things were not going their way.

There were no formal exit polls conducted in West Bonner County, where the school district covers 781 square miles over timbered hills and crystalline lakes in the north Idaho panhandle. But Dana Douglas, a fit and forceful blonde sipping on an Americano and a water bottle boosted with electrolytes (she was teaching spin at 6 p.m.) had been poll-watching at Edgemere Grange Hall, and she had her indicator for how voters were casting their ballots: “Anyone who said, ‘Hello, good morning’” was in their camp. “Anyone with a scowl” who would not look her in the eye was in the other.

“It’s going to be a battle,” she said at the table. Sitting beside her, Candy Turner, a retired elementary school teacher who had brought Ziploc bags of pear slices and dried cranberries for the hours ahead, agreed. “I think we are in trouble based on what I saw.”

After Election Day, headlines in key locales all around the country spoke of moms fighting extremists in local school board races and winning. But even as some celebrated “flipping” their school boards back, far-right groups like Moms for Liberty remain. As the organization declared in an email blast in which they claimed winning 50 new school board seats: “WE ARE JUST GETTING STARTED!”

Some people overlook school board skirmishes, seeing them as trivial. For Turner, Douglas, and many in the West Bonner County School District, they are anything but. It’s not about Democrats versus Republicans (Turner is a registered Democrat; Douglas is “a proud conservative Republican”). It’s about the viability of public education in their community.

This is not hyperbole. The national infection facing public schooling — the tug-of-war between education professionals and extremist culture warriors — has brought chaos and damage to West Bonner County. After this past school year ended, the superintendent acknowledged that 31 percent of teachers, counselors, and education leaders left the district, and scores of parents pulled their children, opting for homeschooling, online learning, or enrolling in another district. Buildings are infrequently cleaned; an elementary school principal reported at an October school board meeting that mice were running over children’s feet and hallways smelled of urine.

What has happened in West Bonner County offers a warning to public school supporters elsewhere. Douglas, Turner, and others are fighting to restore normalcy to an institution that should not be up for grabs — but is.

“We’ve been the canary in the coal mine,”Margaret Hall, the current school board chair who faced a far-right challenger, said on the eve of the November election. Hall, a soft-spoken but firm force, has served on the board for eight years, even through chemotherapy treatments for cancer. “What has to happen,” she said, “is people have to wake up and decide, ‘We don’t want someone to come in and tell us what we want. We want to decide ourselves.’”

Idaho is a conservative state and Bonner County is even more so, with registered Republicans outnumbering Democrats by almost seven to one (statewide it’s closer to five to one). Despite the nation’s bitter party politics, residents of this county have traditionally exercised a neighborly pragmatism in which the kids — or, as Douglas prefers, “our babies” — come first.

People filled in the gaps when it came to local needs, from sending groceries home with some children over weekends to teachers helping students brush their teeth or spending extra hours with struggling readers. But that spirit is now being tested by extremists who see a soft target in a stressed school district. Suddenly, the far-right’s anti-public-education catchphrases blared regularly on the national stage have become wedged into the local lexicon.

For example, “transgenderism” (described by one candidate as “boys in girls bathrooms, boys in girls sports, ‘gender-affirming care,’ and related absurdities”) became a top issue in this November’s school board race. One candidate for reelection, Troy Reinbold, a nonchalant figure who has attended meetings in cutoff shorts and exited mid-agenda without explanation, touted his work on “the strongest transgender policy in Idaho schools” and opposition to “social emotional learning,” which he called “a precursor to critical race theory.”

Hall, for her part, abstained in an August vote on a school district policy that would require teachers and staff to “refer to students by their biological sex” and students to use bathrooms and locker rooms corresponding to their genders assigned at birth, along with bar transgender girls from girls’ sports teams. She said it was confusing, poorly written, and not vetted by the board’s legal counsel (instead it was reviewed by the anti-LGBTQ Christian legal advocacy group, Alliance Defending Freedom). Hall’s campaign signs were later tagged with rainbow stickers. The policy ended up passing 4-0.

How a place that had long treated differences with a live-and-let-live ethos adopted the intolerant tone of national politics is anyone’s guess. Some blame an influx of newcomers. Bonner County, like the rest of Idaho, is growing, and over the past decade, the tally of registered voters has risen almost 50 percent to nearly 32,000.

But who they are and why some of them don’t support public education is a more complicated question. It’s possible that Idaho’s lax COVID-19 rules lured extremists, survivalists, and those lacking a communal impulse. There’s also a broader arc at play in a state economy that’s forced people to shift from work in local sawmills to commuter jobs that get them home later and leave them reliant on others to keep civic life running — a common pattern in 21st-century America. But Priest River, where the district is headquartered, is close-knit, populated by descendants of the six Naccarato brothers, who came from Italy to build the Great Northern Railroad in the late 1800s and stayed. That includes many mom organizers like Candy Naccarato Turner.

Priest River police chief Drew McLain dates the start of recent drama to the school board vote to rescind the English Language Arts curriculum from the well-established education publisher McGraw Hill. It had been swiftly and unanimously approved in June 2022 and was delivered to replace the curriculum that was out of print. But far-right activists objected, complaining that it included aspects of social emotional learning. Such instruction — on skills like “self-confidence, problem-solving, and pro-social behavior,” as McGraw Hill described the curriculum on its website — is a bugaboo for conservative ideologues. And on August 24 of last year, with one member missing, the board voted 3-1 to return the texts to the publisher.

The decision got the attention of moms like Douglas, Turner, and others. Whitney Hutchins, a new mother who graduated from West Bonner County schools in 2010 and whose family has operated a resort on Priest Lake for generations, started attending school board meetings. Ditto for Jessica Rogers, a mom of three daughters who had served on the curriculum committee and was upset by the reversal. Others, too, wondered what was happening.

After all, for years the meetings had been quiet affairs at the district’s storefront office on Main Street in a room with aged wood floors, folding chairs and tables, and a capacity of 34. By late 2022, such serenity was a thing of the past. People started lining up three to four hours in advance, which McLain said forced him to close Main Street for safety. Quickly, the gatherings got more and more unruly. First, McLain sent one officer, then several. At times, he called on the sheriff for backup.

Things escalated even further when Jackie Branum, who was hired as superintendent in the summer of 2022, proposed a supplemental levy, which sets a chosen amount as property tax to support local schools’ operating costs, and a four-day school week to address financial issues — then abruptly resigned. The board approved the shorter week, angering many parents. Then it appointed Susie Luckey, a popular elementary school principal, as interim superintendent until June. By May, the board had put a levy before voters that would provide roughly one-third of the district’s budget.

Supplemental levies in Idaho had long been used for capital projects and are now essential for operations. But residents suddenly sorted into “for” and “against” factions. Signs sprouted along rural roads; arguments raged on Facebook. The levy failed by 105 votes out of 3,295 cast. Parents expressed concern at a public meeting that the district would cut sports and extracurricular activities; some worried about teacher retention. Not to mention: The district still had no permanent superintendent.

In a swift but puzzling process, the school board eventually announced two finalists for superintendent. One was Luckey. The other was a far-right former elected politician who worked for the Idaho Freedom Foundation by the name of Branden Durst. Durst was an unusual choice given his lack of school experience and the IFF’s hostility to public education. (In 2019, the president of the IFF called public schools “the most virulent form of socialism (and indoctrination thereto) in America today,” adding, “I don’t think government should be in the education business.”)

Then again, it wasn’t Durst’s first go-around: In 2022, the Democrat turned Republican ran for state superintendent of public instruction. He lost the GOP primary but in Bonner County beat his two challengers with 60 percent of the vote. Among the donors to his campaign were IFF leaders and a local resident who had opposed the McGraw Hill curriculum.

It is unclear how Durst, an abrasive outsider from 420 miles south in Boise, was so quickly ushered into contention. Jim Jones, former Idaho attorney general and a former justice of the Idaho Supreme Court, points to the IFF. He said the organization aims to “discredit and dismantle” public schools throughout the state, “starting with West Bonner County School District.”

Jones also credits the IFF for helping extremists Keith Rutledge and Susan Brown get elected to the West Bonner County School Board in November 2021 in a low-turnout race. It was a pivotal election — but people didn’t realize it then. In hindsight, Douglas said residents “got lazy and complacent and we didn’t get to the polls and put people in the district that valued public education.”

By early 2023, Rutledge and Brown — along with Reinbold, who revealed himself as a fellow extremist — had become a majority voting bloc on the five-person school board. Hall, the school board chair who works on climate change mitigation and who readily references the Idaho education code, and Carlyn Barton, a mother and teacher who describes herself as a “common sense constitutional conservative,” were at odds with the other three.

Durst’s candidacy earlier this year turned up the heat on divisions both on the board and in the community. School board meetings were packed. Militia started showing up. And while the Second Amendment is cherished in Idaho, residents were alarmed to find men donned in khaki with walkie-talkies — and presumably guns — present for conversations on children’s education.

“The militia should not be at school board meetings,” argued McLain, the police chief who claimed that one grandfather “was so pissed at the militia” that he arrived drunk with a rifle. “It’s been frustrating,” he added. “If you told me I had the choice of a school board meeting or a bank robbery, I would be way less stressed going to the bank robbery.”

Following multiple contentious meetings with Hall and Barton, who pressed board members to reconsider Durst’s candidacy, in late June, he was selected by a 3-2 vote. After his hiring was finalized, Barton charged that “the direction of our board has turned into a fascist dictatorship with an agenda which is far from our conservative point of view.”

From the moment he slid into the superintendent’s maroon Naugahyde-upholstered chair in the West Bonner County School District office, Durst seemed to relish his position of power. There was serious work to do — like negotiating a teacher contract — but he appeared far more interested in burnishing his reputation, describing his takeover as “a pilot” that others could learn from.

This was a chance, he told me in multiple interviews, to use the district to test his “ideas that are frankly unorthodox in education,” including some rooted in his Christian values. He wanted intelligent design taught alongside evolution in biology classes. He was working to have a Christian university offer an Old Testament course to high school students at a Baptist church near their school. He hoped the district would adopt curricula developed by the Christian conservative college Hillsdale in Michigan.

Durst also cast himself as a model for how non-educators could take charge of a school district. He boasted that national far-right figures were in touch and encouraged him not to “screw this up.” As he put it, “I broke into the club. I got a superintendency without having to go through the traditional process of doing it.” Indeed, he had not been a school principal, administrator, or classroom teacher.

That lack of process was a major problem for the state Board of Education, which in August gave the district notice it was not in compliance with Idaho law, a determination that jeopardized tax dollars critical for funding the schools. A letter sent to Rutledge, the chair at the time, cited budget irregularities, missed school bus inspections, concerns about discipline rates of special education students, and the failure to file forms to access federal funds. But the main issue, the state’s board said, was the district’s “decision to employ a non-certified individual as superintendent.” Durst had sought emergency certification but was rebuffed by the state.

All of the uncertainty and division grew so dire that teachers found themselves struggling to carry on, leaving many no choice but to give notice. “It breaks my heart that I had to leave,” Steph Eldore, a fixture at Priest Lake Elementary School for 26 years, told me over tears in late August. With her daughter starting high school, Eldore and her husband, Ken, who had been director of facilities and capital improvements for 16 years, quit the district, finding jobs and enrolling their daughter elsewhere.

By the end of summer, 27 teachers had retired or resigned, along with 19 other staff members, including the director of special education, a school principal, and three counselors. Families followed. By fall, school district enrollment was down to 1,005 students, 100 less than projected. Even McLain, the police chief, had rented a place in Sandpoint, about half an hour from Priest River, and enrolled his two high school–aged children there. “We call ourselves the Priest River refugees,” he said. SergeantChris Davis, the district’s school resource officer, similarly said his daughter has opted to finish high school online. All in all, the Lake Pend Oreille School District in Sandpoint, whose permanent levy offers steady funding, reported 43 student transfers from West Bonner County School District.

Others, of course, remained. As the school year began, the West Bonner County School District 83 (“Strive for Greatness”) Facebook page was active with notices of cross-country races, soccer games, and picture day. But behind the sheen of normalcy were problems. A shortage of bus drivers led the district to cancel or combine routes. Many students’ commute times doubled, upsetting parents whose young children got home after dark, while other students had no bus transportation at all. There were also issues with school cleanliness. Kylie Hoepfer, a mom of a fourth grader, took on cleaning mouse turds on the bleachers at her daughter’s volleyball game. “I had heard about the mice problem but sweeping it all up was pretty gross,” she recalled.

The biggest hurt for families, however, was the loss of seasoned teachers. The district hired new ones, but a number of them soon quit. Trinity Duquette, a 1997 graduate of the high school, said her 8th-grade daughter “is on her third language arts teacher this year,” each with different styles and expectations. “They have been assigned essays and had a turnover in the midst of the assignment.”

For Paul and Jessica Turco, who built strong bonds with their son’s special education teachers who have since left the district, the loss “was like breaking up a family.” They said it was weeks into the school year before the new teachers read their son’s Individualized Education Program, the written plan outlining his learning needs. “It was like he was starting from the very beginning rather than a stepping stone from where he left off the prior year,” said Jessica. And it’s showing. “We have been dealing with constant outbursts,” she added, and “when he comes home from school, he doesn’t want to talk about his day.”

While watching the disruption, Hutchins, the new mom whose soft features belie a fierce frankness, made a decision: She and her husband were moving to Spokane, Washington. “I’m not going to raise my daughter here,” she said, curling into a leather chair at her family’s resort. Hutchins’s brother is gay. Watching his experience in school had been painful, and the hostility toward LGBTQ+ students seemed to be growing worse. “This is horrible to say,” Hutchins said after Durst’s hiring, “but the right-wing extremists, they are taking over our community.”

She wasn’t the only one thinking that — but not everyone was in a position to leave. Rogers, the mom of three who was on the curriculum committee, and her husband had recently built a home with sweeping views of Chase Lake. There was no moving away. So, she got involved at the school, first as a volunteer, then as a paraprofessional, and, more recently, teaching technology. Initially, she hadn’t wanted to get political, but soon, it no longer felt like a choice.

Back in late 2022, after the school board rescinded the McGraw Hill curriculum and voted for a four-day week, parents like Paul and Jessica Turco reached out to Turner, the retired elementary school teacher, who dialed up Douglas, the Election Day poll-watcher. “I called Dana and said, ‘The kids want some help,’” Turner recalled.

Although Douglas grew up over the state line in Newport, Washington, she married her high school sweetheart from Priest River and now bled Spartan orange. They had built a thriving family business, sent two children through the local schools, and had grandchildren enrolled. She understood that what she saw happening was at odds with what she stood for.

“I am a Republican. I am a Christian conservative,” said Douglas. “But I am 100 percent pro–public education, and I am pro–every child, and I will do anything for this community to embrace everyone and to love everyone.”

She, Turner, and others, including Hutchins, Rogers, and the Turcos, began meeting. How to take back the district? It started with the school board and, said Douglas, included a notion that should seem obvious: “getting people who value public education” to serve.

By the summer of 2023, they had collected signatures for a recall vote of Rutledge and Brown, the board’s chair and vice chair respectively. The group’s slogan—“Recall, Replace, Rebuild” — blossomed on signs in downtown storefronts, in yards, and banners posted in fields. The group collected endorsements, video testimonials, and built a website. By the time they were days out from the August 29 vote, their numbers had swelled. Over 125 people gathered in the wood-beamed great room at the Priest Lake Event Center for what was part rally, part check-in: Who could pick up “WBCSD Strong” T-shirts? Who would hold signs at key spots ahead of the vote?

Recalls usually fail. But in West Bonner County, the result was resounding. With a 60.9 percent turnout, Rutledge and Brown were recalled by a wide margin. But then, after the election but before votes were officially certified, Rutledge and Brown posted notice of a board meeting for Friday, September 1, at 5 p.m., just before Labor Day weekend. The top agenda items — “Dissolve Current Board of Trustees” and “Turn Meeting Over to the Superintendent”— raised alarms.

“I read the agenda and I was irate,” said Katie Elsaesser, a mom of two and a lawyer whose office is near the school district office. “I immediately started calling people.” She texted her husband that she would miss their son’s soccer game, then drafted a complaint, finishing at 2 a.m. In the morning, she drove to the district court in Sandpoint. One hour and fifteen minutes before the meeting was to take place, Elsaesser got a ruling to halt it. McLain delivered the news to the crowd in the high school cafeteria. “You would think I scored a touchdown,” he said.

In another strange twist after the recall, the board could not hold several meetings because Reinbold failed to show. Without a quorum, which required three present members, business halted. Finally, after a former school board chair alerted county officials, the sheriff agreed to investigate. Reinbold reappeared, and in mid-October, the board finally filled the vacant seats with two people who supported the recall.

With his options running thin, on September 25, 2023, Durst announced plans for “an amicable and fair exit.” For the fourth time in less than two years — since a longtime superintendent retired in June 2022 — the district was again seeking a new leader. Hall reached out to Joseph Kren, a former principal at the high school who had also served as superintendent in a nearby district. Kren was enjoying retirement—he got Hall’s call at 9:30 p.m. before he was to wake at 3:30 a.m. to go elk hunting. He would agree to a 90-day contract (the four-day week means it runs through March).

His appointment was greeted with relief. Kren, a serious-faced former wrestler, is religious but not ideological. On the sixth day of his new job, occupying the same spot Durst had just vacated, Kren showed me the silver-colored crucifix he had hung above his desk. Kren was clear that his faith “has guided [him]” but has “never gotten in the way.”

Growing up with a brother who was deaf, Kren said, has made him attuned to matters of inclusion and accommodation, which he called “a legal and moral responsibility.” His only agenda was to put things right. By Thanksgiving, he told me, the district had corrected state compliance issues, and he was working to add bus drivers. With so many turnovers, he acknowledged “disruptions can and do occur.” But his plan, he said, was steady: to “roll up [his] sleeves and work alongside” staff and to make “firm, consistent, morally sound decisions based in fact and the law.”

The November 2023 election would be pivotal. With the two school board replacements set — picked by the recall supporters who lived in the two school zones that had been represented by Rutledge and Brown — the other three zones’ seats were on the ballot. The pro-recall crowd wanted to boot Reinbold and reelect Hall and Barton. The election, in essence, would decide which side had a majority.

But each had challengers. Hall faced Alan Galloway, a sharp-jawed army veteran and cattle rancher who opposed “transgenderism,” efforts “to impose the outlawed teaching of CRT through SEL or any other ‘trojan horse’ scheme,” and a levy. He circulated a controversial letter with inflammatory claims, including that Hall had “failed our children by delaying action related to bullying, dress codes and Pornography within our schools.”

Barton faced Kathy Nash, who had pushed to rescind the curriculum, was treasurer of the Bonner County Republican Central Committee, and connected to far-right figures at the state level. Two of the far-right candidates shared a campaign treasurer and campaign finance reports show some of the same people donating to the three far-right candidates.

In other words, there were teams. Jim Kelly, Nash’s campaign manager, said Nash would bring scrutiny to school finances — and provide representation to those wounded by the recall. Kelly told me, “The big concern for Kathy, and for a lot of us, is that the school board is going to be 100 percent lopsided,” if the candidates he backed, whom many would consider far-right, were not elected. “People are objecting that there will not be a conservative voice.”

And yet, Nash’s opponent, Barton, was a conservative Christian. As was Reinbold’s challenger, Elizabeth Glazier, whose website described her as a “Proud Republican & Conservative Christian” who opposed the four-day week and the hiring of Durst. The race was not conservatives against liberals or Republicans against Democrats. It was, as locals told me, a referendum casting those who cared that students had books, buses, and teachers with a decent wage, against those who embraced extremist rhetoric.

At various polling places on Election Day, far-right campaign volunteers were overheard promising that Nash and Reinbold would keep boys out of girls’ bathrooms.

For parents who rely on the public schools, this kind of allegation was maddening. “It’s just paranoid bull honkey,” said Jacob Sateren, a father of eight (six in the schools). We met at a coffee shop across from the junior high on Election Day shortly after he had voted. Sateren, who’d turned a challenging childhood into a successful adulthood building pole barns, laughs when people call him “a woke liberal.” (His Facebook profile features an American flag emblazoned with the Second Amendment, he pointed out.)

He finds charges that schools are “indoctrinating” children absurd. “I haven’t had any of my kids come home and talk about any crazy weird stuff. And even if they did, if you are an involved parent, it doesn’t really matter. If teachers at the school are teaching my kids something I disagree with, it’s my job to be paying enough attention to catch it,” he said. “I don’t know why people get worked up. There is always going to be stuff you disagree with.”

On the day before the vote, under steady rainfall, Hutchins, Rogers, and another volunteer placed signs along Route 57 across from Priest Lake Elementary School, a polling station. Rogers’s youngest daughter skipped while twirling a child-sized umbrella. “A lot of people are very confident of Margy winning — we are not,” said Rogers, referring to Hall by her nickname.

There was good reason for concern. In the end, Hall did best Galloway by a 60-40 margin. But as Douglas and Turner had feared, Nash defeated Barton, and Reinbold won over Glazier. Retaking the district would not be quick or easy. Yet having a majority on the board offered relief. “We can rebuild,” said Douglas.

Hall, however, was concerned about the division that had eroded support for public education in the first place. The question on her mind was how to bring calm. On the eve of the election, she had made a soup with red lentils, ginger, and coconut milk, which she ladled into small ceramic bowls. As she sat at her dining table talking and eating, she rose periodically to let her dog, Cinco, outdoors, accompanying him with a flashlight. Because of a defect at birth, he now has only three legs; there were cougars and a pride of mountain lions in the dark woods.

Between trips, she shared her idea of creating random seating assignments at the round tables in the high school cafeteria where school board meetings were now held, a strategy for encouraging residents on each side to sit together and actually converse. “How tired are people of the fighting and name-calling and bashing?” There was much work to do — a new levy needed, a curriculum people agreed on, teacher contracts, luring families back — but she told me it started with “trying to work as a team, to balance perspectives.”

The day after the election, with the reality of the mixed board clear, Hall offered a sober assessment. “My work,” she said, “is definitely cut out for me.”

And they’ve repeatedly said no — most recently on Nov. 7, marking the fourth consecutive denial of a Mountain View School District levy ask in as many years. 

Nonetheless, trustees are going to try again in May. This time they’ll request a two-year, $6.2 million levy instead of a one-year, $3.1 million levy. 

They keep asking because the alternatives are bleak, according to Carly Behler, the district’s comptroller. If the next measure doesn’t pass, trustees will consider closing a school to cut costs — a possibility that many community members oppose.

If passed, the levy would fund a gamut of district needs, including: utilities, substitutes, support staff, maintenance and repairs, athletics, transportation, employee benefits, insurance, instructional materials, professional services, technology, custodial supplies, and special education contracted services.

At the board’s last meeting, patrons — including some students — advocated to keep all five of its schools open. Community members worry that Clearwater Valley High would be on the chopping block, but Superintendent Kim Spacek said trustees haven’t decided whether to close a school, or which one. Those conversations will come if voters deny the levy in May. 

Mountain View School District schools: Grangeville Elementary/Middle; Grangeville High; Clearwater Valley High; Clearwater Valley Elementary; Elk City School

“There were a lot of passionate comments,” Behler said. “They were saying how important the school is and how it creates the community. If you take that away, it really impacts whether people would want to move or even live there.”

But so far, that public sentiment hasn’t translated to financial support. 

The repeated levy failures are unusual, as the measures usually pass. In the past five years, voters have approved 94% of supplemental levies (which require simple majority approval) in Idaho. 

The reasons for the community pushback are many, according to school officials: a divided community; family budgets crunched by increasing property values and taxes; rebellion against a Legislature that relies on local communities to close education funding gaps; distrust of public education; and a growing homeschool movement.  

It’s a “perfect storm,” said Amanda Bush, the district’s special education coordinator, describing an extreme case of what can happen when voters become disenfranchised with school districts and/or government. 

“We are just an example of how all of those things can come together and cause real problems for a school district,” she said.

She said she doesn’t “blame anybody” or fault their reasons. There are problems with school funding, but the answer is not to stop financially supporting local education, she said. 

“I’m frustrated that we continue to struggle to just exist,” she said. “For the benefit of our students, I want our schools to be healthy, safe places for kids.”

“I’m frustrated that we continue to struggle to just exist.” — Amanda Bush, special education coordinator, Mountain View School District.

A community divided — and disenchanted

Bush said she’s seeing more and more students disenroll to become homeschooled, reflecting a national trend. 

“There’s a shift against public education in rural, and in really conservative communities, across the country,” she said. “There’s a huge increase in homeschooling that’s happening here.”

The district primarily serves two communities — Grangeville and Clearwater Valley — and each has its own elementary and high school. While the communities are about 28 miles apart — a winding, 45-minute drive — more than distance divides them. Clearwater Valley has a strong homeschooled population, to the point where they feel “they don’t need our school system,” Bush said.  

Mountain View School District by the numbers:
Total students: 1,169
Grangeville students: 838
Clearwater Valley/Elk City students: 331

In the last election, Clearwater Valley votes sank the levy, Bush said. Clearwater Valley is also more rural, has less industry, and fewer job opportunities. 

Part of what drives the rancor about levies is a rivalry between Grangeville and Clearwater Valley. There have been increasing calls to separate Mountain View School District into two, smaller districts. 

“The communities are so divided that they’re determined to keep failing levies because they don’t want to support the other,” Behler said. 

Local voters also feel disenfranchised by the dependence on local taxpayers to fund education. 

“There’s a strong sense in our community that property taxes supporting schools are unconstitutional,” she said. “(Patrons) want the (Idaho Department of Education) to fund education 100%.”

At the same time, taxpayers feel the squeeze of increasing property values and the increasing property taxes that go with them.

A new superintendent is hopeful for a levy success story

Spacek, new to the district this year, noted that other districts in the area have passed levies, and often. 

“They must have a good relationship with their community and provide the type of education their community wants,” he said. “And so that’s a challenge for Mountain View.”

The district and its communities have questions to answer, he said, like whether forming two districts is a solution worth pursuing, and how to best prepare students for life after high school. 

But he saw the 48% levy approval at the last election as progress.

“That’s probably the closest it’s been to passing for a long time,” he said. “To me, that’s a positive because there’s a recognition that we need to do something for schools.”

Superintendent Debbie Critchfield believes rural communities are highly interested in increasing workforce-ready career technical programs for their students, so she wasn’t surprised by the “sheer demand” of grant applications reaching the Idaho Department of Education.

Thirty-two of 35 proposals went to rural schools, which accounts for a little more than three-fourths of the money awarded so far.

“It’s problem solving. It’s math. It’s science. It’s all of these things captured in work-based learning. I firmly believe that a good, hard day’s work is the answer to a lot of things,” Critchfield said.

During the last legislative session, when lawmakers approved $45 million for Idaho Career Ready Students (ICRS), Critchfield said her critics claimed she’s trying to turn every kid into a welder.

“That was one of the things we heard. If kids don’t want to weld, they still don’t have to. But when I went to Twin Falls High School, I asked the principal to take me to your most popular elective class,” Critchfield recalled. “It was welding.”

She encountered similar stories about career technical education in the farming, food processing, tourism and logging regions.

And applications have poured in. The state has received more in grant requests than it has money to allocate. In the span of four months, approximately $35.9 million of the $45 million ICRS grant money has been set aside for 35 proposal requests. Approximately $111 million was requested, which is 146% more than what they were able to award. About $9.1 million remains unspent.

The Department of Education is administering the program but spending decisions are made by the ICRS council — 11 industry leaders, career technical educators, lawmakers, education leaders and Critchfield.

Grants are intended to create or expand pathways into welding, fabrication, machining, agriculture, forestry, mining, nursing and cyber security. The program incentivizes rural schools to align programs with their community and industry needs. The money should reduce the problem of finding resources needed to sustain high-quality career technical programming.

The high-level of interest is evidence that career technical education is a powerful tool, Critchfield said. “I’m not surprised that our schools are trying to meet career goals for our students. I’m not surprised that there’s more interest in technical programs. I’m not surprised that kids want a jumpstart on their careers.”

But how will the state measure success and provide accountability for the millions promised across Idaho in communities like Middleton and Pocatello, and rural Deary, Malad, Orifino and Wilder? The ICRS council expects school districts to be “good stewards,” submit quarterly reports, a final project completion report and account for spending in district financial reports, according to the state’s website.

The council will consider metrics and evidence to measure success and return on investment at their February meeting. Expanding workforce-ready programs could impact job creation, unemployment, local economic growth, graduation rates, student mental health and career choices.

Districts are required to answer “show us how you’re going to know that this is successful and sustainable” on the the application.

Pocatello-Chubbuck School District’s longtime career technical education instructor Rhonda Naftz was emphatic about the impact in her region: “This is one of the greatest things the state of Idaho has ever offered to students.”

The Idaho Division of Career Technical Education released the following data that demonstrates the growth of high school CTE programs over the last six years.

Where is the ICRS money going?

The ICRS council met three times and committed 79% — or $28.2 million — for 32 rural and remote school district proposals; three proposals were awarded in areas not considered rural.

“It was very clear that we were under-serving local economies,” Critchfield recalled, about her visits around the state. In North Idaho, the forestry, logging and timber industry provided the catalyst “for getting this grant together. I consistently heard about great opportunities for students.”

Four forestry and natural resources proposals received $3.5 million for start-up or expansion of logging and the production of forestry products.

About 65% of all the money awarded ($23.5 million) went to five school districts’ capital projects. The districts receiving the largest awards are: Pocatello-Chubbuck, $6.5 million; Jefferson, $5.3 million; Minidoka, $4.9 million; Blackfoot, $3.9 million; Sugar-Salem, $2.7 million. In total, capital projects received $33.1 million. Existing programs at 13 schools received $391,165. And Potlatch, Firth, Shelley, Orofino and West Bonner districts were approved for new programs, totaling approximately $2.3 million.

“It’s life changing. This grant will change the face of CTE in this whole region,” Naftz said about Pocatello-Chubbuck’s career technical center, which is expected to officially open in 2024.

Hands-on, real-world learning is an answer for students who feel “aimless” or lack “confidence,” Critchfield said. “There is a sense of pride. You develop perseverance and grit.”

Millions were awarded to long- and short-term projects since July but only a small portion has been spent: about $400,000 through requests for reimbursement, a district issued purchase order or vendor invoice to the Department of Education. There is no deadline for when funds are to be spent. Any unused money will be returned to fund proposals not previously accepted.

The ICRS council

The council’s next meeting is Feb. 16. Applications are due by Jan. 31. The council is made up of the following members: 

• Critchfield, who chairs the council.
• Clay Long, administrator, Idaho Division of Career Technical Education.
• Lex Godfrey, secondary CTE instructor, Career Technical Educators of Idaho.
• Brandy Funk, secondary CTE instructor, Career Technical Educators of Idaho.
• Rodney Farrington, associate professor, Career Technical Educators of Idaho.
• Robb Bloem, StanCraft Companies, representing industry.
• Dana Kirkham, Idaho Environmental Coalition, representing industry.
• Angelique Rood, Idaho Power, representing industry.
• Marie Price, Idaho Forest Group, representing the Workforce Development Council.
• Sen. Kevin Cook, Idaho Senate, District 32.
• Rep. Judy Boyle, Idaho House of Representatives, District 9.

“I have just been really just blown away at the level of attention and experience that people” on the council have, Critchfield said.

But rejecting applications is part of the process. Some proposals — particularly those outside the scope of in-demand careers — were rejected outright, but most are placed in the “not yet” category: they will be reconsidered, if money becomes available later.

The council rejected a request for heavy equipment. Additional ineligible expenses include:

• Curriculum for existing programs.
• Instructor travels for professional development, course work and conferences.
• Student travel for general field trips and extra-curricular activities (specific, itemized requests for travel may be considered).
• Soft costs associated with building programming and construction — contractor administration and overhead fees and building permits (architectural and design fees, and contingency fees are allowable expenses).

School districts and charters can apply for the funds here. The ICRS program was approved by the Legislature earlier this year and signed into law by Gov. Brad Little on March 31. Questions can be directed to program coordinator Allison Duman at aduman@sde.idaho.gov.

Pocatello-Chubbuck to offer a regional CTE center

The council awarded the Portneuf Valley Technical Education and Career Campus in Chubbuck $6.5 million to complete a regional CTE center that will serve students from surrounding communities who do not have access to programs. 

A major development was the Pocatello-Chubbuck school board’s decision last year to purchase the old 78,000 square foot Allstate building for around $12 million, using local plant facilities levy and federal money. But without the new grant, Naftz believes it would have taken another six to 10 years to complete the career center in stages.

“For 23 years we’ve been thinking, talking and trying to figure out how it is going to work. We got very serious about seven years ago. So we’ve been at this for a long time,” Naftz said. 

Surrounding school districts who could benefit from the regional CTE center are American Falls, Marsh Valley, Aberdeen, Rockland, Soda Springs, Grace and Malad. The center, expected to open in 2024, will serve between 1,000 to 1,400 students per day.

“We are opening that door for whichever students want to show up. When this building is finished, it’s not going to look like anything in the state. It’s going to be at a different level,” Naftz said. 

Are CTE teacher endorsements increasing?

The approval process for new CTE programs takes place during the spring with the approval cycle ending on Feb. 15.

“We anticipate to see a continued growth during the upcoming application window. (Our agency) has seen significant growth in CTE programs throughout the state over the past six years,” said Megan O’Rourke, director of communications for Career Technical Education.

There were 1,089 teachers teaching CTE courses in the 2022-23 school year. There are 1,083 teachers this school year in classrooms across the state, but the agency says that could increase.

The number of teachers “still has room to increase over the balance of this year,” the agency reports.

There were 338 secondary applications for CTE endorsements last year. So far this year, the number is 171 but “similar to the growth in programming, we anticipate continued growth in applications,” O’Rourke said. 

The following lists detail the $35.9 million approved by the ICRS council

Existing Programs

• Notus School District #135 – Welding Program $27,000
• Hansen School District #415 – Applied Accounting Program $25,530
• Murtaugh School District #418 – Ag Education Program $20,324
• Marsh Valley School District #21 – Automotive Service Technician and Mechanics $5,347
• COSSA #555 – Automotive-Diesel Program Equipment Upgrades $56,721
• Whitepine Joint School District #288 – Multi-Program Equipment Upgrades $47,871
• Mullan School District #392 – Mullan Welding Program Equipment Upgrades $61,248
• Oneida County School District #351 – CNC Plasma System $28,622
• Council School District #013 – Ag Facility Equipment Upgrades $23,000
• Wallace School District #393 – Welding & Wood Shop Equipment Upgrades $23,440
• Castleford School District #417 – Welding Program Upgrades $22,250
• Marsh Valley School District #21 – Welding Program Upgrades $32,617
• Bear Lake School District #033 – Automotive Technology Equipment Upgrades $17,195

New Programs

• Potlatch School District #285 – Forestry and Natural Resources Program $989,198
• Firth School District #59 – Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) Program $25,375
• Shelley School District #60 – Welding Program $55,457
• Orofino Joint School District #171 – Natural Resources & Forestry Pathway $528,100
• West Bonner School District #083 – CTE Natural Resources Pathway $725,240

Capital Projects

• Midvale School District #433 – Ag Education Facility Expansion $1,058,000
• Minidoka School District #331 – CTE Facility $4,900,000
• Pocatello-Chubbuck School District #25 – CTE Campus (PV-TEC) $6,500,000
• Kimberly School District #414 – Ag Education Facility Expansion $1,320,000
• Cassia County School District #151 – Diesel Program Facility $1,659,491
• Wilder School District #133 – Ag Education Facility Expansion $301,487
• Blackfoot School District #55 – CTE Center (BTEC) $3,898,071
• Sugar-Salem School District #322 – Multi-Program CTE Facility $2,700,000
• Soda Springs School District #150 – Multi-Program CTE Facility $370,960
• New Plymouth School District #372 – New Ag Education Building $2,272,799
• Cascade School District #422 – Ag Welding Shop HVAC/Electrical Upgrades $16,361
• Firth School District #59 – Ag Shop Upgrades $103,299
• Hansen School District #415 – Animal Science Pathway Facility $71,309
• Middleton School District #134 – Multi-Program CTE Facility $1,124,800
• Fremont County School District #215 – Greenhouse Facility $253,120
• Jefferson School District #251 – Multi-Program CTE Facility $5,300,000
• St. Maries Joint School District #041 – Multi-Program CTE Facility $1,280,934