Education

Skip Hall has been a teacher at Grangeville High School for 31 years. His early American history class with freshmen and sophomores will be one of his last: he’s retiring at the end of the school year.

As Hall’s class works together on projects, he takes a moment to reflect on the state of education in his district.

“The biggest thing I see is lack of choice for the students," Hall says.

The College of Southern Idaho is launching a pilot program next school year allowing high school students to take college science classes for free.

Dubbed the “Dual Credit General Education Academy,” twenty-five students from across the Magic Valley will be able to take all of their gen-ed courses in the two year program.

Hadi Partovi is the CEO and founder of Code.org, a nationwide non-profit that encourages young students to take up computer programming. He also launched an annual event called Hour of Code.

A proposed $172 million bond to fund construction and improvements at schools across the Boise District easily passed in yesterday’s election. Officials say some of the building projects could be underway as soon as June. Many of the refurbishments and rebuilds planned by the Boise District are scheduled to be completed by fall of 2018.

Jaeden Forrey took on an unusual school assignment.

“This is my 1970 Monte Carlo," says Forrey. "I got it – not this last Christmas but the Christmas before. And I got it [when it] had no paint, no engine, no transmission, no interior. So I did all the body work, I did all the engine work and interior work on it.”

This week in our news series Financing The Future: Examining School Bonds And Levies, Boise State Public Radio and Idaho Education News looked at the finances and infrastructure of the Boise School District. We studied school bonds, past and present, and walked through aging buildings slated for a tear-down. We visited a career-technical high school ready to expand its programs and saw over-crowding at a dual-language immersion school.

With the March 14 bond election on the horizon, Matt Guilhem sat down with Kevin Richert to wrap up the series.

The Boise School District has been building its case for voters to approve its $172 million bond on March 14. This isn’t the first time the district has had to sell the idea of a bond. There was a bond passed in 1996 and in 2006, and a levy in 2012.

More than a decade ago, voters approved a $94 million bond. Nancy Gregory was on the Boise School Board at that time.

Bonds in Idaho can be hard to pass, in part because a lot of “yes” votes are needed at the polls. So how school districts explain their need and the cost to voters is critical in a bond campaign.

In this installment of our Financing the Future Series, we take a closer look at the Boise District’s bond and why it could be a challenge to pass.

Boise State Public Radio and Idaho Education News are partnering to produce a week-long series on how the March 14 statewide school elections affect students, communities and taxpayers.

High school junior Erin Frazer is laser-focused, moving her mouse deftly as she manipulates an image on her computer screen.

“I think Illustrator is my favorite out of all these programs,” she says.