NAMPA, Idaho (CBS2) — Nearly all of Vallivue’s elementary schools are out of space. District leaders hope voters approve a bond on the ballot this Tuesday to help.
The $55 million bond would pay for the building of two elementary schools and the purchase of land for a future high school. District leaders say they’re making do with portable classrooms for now, but it’s an expensive and short-term fix.
“It would be devastating if the bond were not to pass,” said Melanie Meza, a fourth-grade teacher at Lakevue Elementary.
All fourth-grade students at Lakevue have to work inside portable classrooms this year and six of the seven elementary schools in the Vallivue School District are overcrowded.
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For example, Lakevue has about 200 more students than the school has space for, so the district bought portable classrooms as a temporary fix.
“Everything else that we have to share is really stretched and really tight and really thin,” said Ken Pahlas, Lakevue principal.
Portable buildings are used for 46 classrooms in the district, but there’s nowhere left to put anymore even if the district wanted to purchase them.
The district simply doesn’t have space for more classrooms, “unless we stop having library or we stopped having music or we stopped having PE and turn those spaces into classrooms,” Pahlas said.
More subdivisions are on the way, which means more students and bigger class sizes – often 30 or more to one teacher.
“We can’t keep spreading teachers so thin and asking, you know, more of them and putting more bodies in the room,” Meza said. “It’s not fair to the kids because we can’t give them the education that they deserve and that they’re here to get.”
She says walking back and forth between the building and portables cuts into learning time.
Several fourth-grade Lakevue students tell me they don’t like the portables.
Pahlas says they make recruitment harder too.
“No teacher is really excited about teaching in a portable. No teacher is too excited about teaching a classroom of 35 kids,” Pahlas said. “I always feel embarrassed to say, ‘You’re going to be in a portable classroom. There’s no bathroom or drinking fountain, but I’ll make sure there’s a standing water cooler in there for you, and I’ll make it as good as I can.’”
The average cost to taxpayers per $100,000 of taxable assessed value isn’t expected to change if voters approve the bond.
“This is basically just giving the city permission to allocate funds to Vallivue District,” Meza said. “It’s not going to lower your tax rate if it doesn’t pass.”
The tax levy rate, $3.29, is actually the lowest it’s been in over 15 years.
“If we do a bond, we actually, the amount that everybody pays for it is really, really small because we spread that out over so many people,” Pahlas said.
Waiting longer could make things worse for the schools, and more expensive for taxpayers down the line.
“We can all see that land prices are going up, housing prices are going up,” Pahlas said. Interest rates could also be higher later.
If voters say no, it could mean, “possible boundary changes, possible moving kids to different schools out of their home school. When we’re having this kind of growth, there’s just all kinds of things we’d have to consider if we can’t build two schools,” Pahlas said.
Election day voting is Tuesday, August 30. You can go to your polling place anytime between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m.
More information can be found on Vallivue’s website. You can also call the district office, 208-454-0445, if you have any other questions.
