The Concerned Citizens for LPOHS Coalition served the Lake Pend Oreille School District with a conditional settlement offer on July 6, following the 31-page official grievance filed the week prior protesting plans to relocate the alternative high school. At the request of the coalition, the school board had planned to vote on the relocation at its upcoming Tuesday, July 14 meeting; however, the coalition is now threatening to recall board members if they do not reschedule the vote for discussion at a standalone public hearing.
The coalition also announced July 8 that it submitted a formal request to the Idaho Department of Education’s Chief Financial Officer, Gideon Tolman, to launch an audit into “PowerSchool Student Information System metadata logs and verify attendance logging compliance.” The request stems from one of many claims in the original grievance, submitted June 30, which alleged that the district uses optional work-from-home days — called “Flex Fridays” — to artificially inflate attendance records and thereby receive more funding from the state. In a June 30 response, the school district stated that, contrary to the coalition’s claims, students who stay home on Flex Fridays but are not in contact with a teacher are marked as absent.
The district further denied claims that it violated Idaho Open Meeting law with its consent agendas, falsified graduation statistics by “coercing” dropouts into signing Intent to Homeschool forms, and that it misused Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds to remodel the LPOSD’s “executive boardroom.” According to the district, money for the renovation came from the general fund and was used “to meet Americans with Disabilities Act requirements as well as space and security concerns.”
A float supporting the LPOHS facility staying in its current location makes its way down Cedar Street in the Sandpoint Independence Day parade on July 4. Photo by Zach Hagadone
The rest of the allegations stem directly from the proposed relocation of Lake Pend Oreille High School from its 117-year-old facility on Boyer Avenue. The district announced its intention to move the alternative high school to the portables behind Sandpoint Middle School in February, subsequently eliminating the school’s electives and sparking backlash from the community. LPOSD cited dwindling attendance, state funding cuts, and the cost of maintenance and renovations as the reasons for the move and intends to remodel the portables following the completion of the SMS renovations to create a new campus for the alternative school.
LPOHS’s 56 students will continue to attend core classes in the historic building for the 2026-’27 school year, taking the bus back and forth from Sandpoint High School or signing up for online classes for all electives. They will then move into the renovated portables for the 2027-’28 school year, where they will have the same elective options.
The coalition has argued that this move violates the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act by forcing students onto the SHS campus and could potentially cost the school district state funding by demoting LPOHS from an alternative school to a program, claims which the school district denies.
According to the district, state classification as an alternative school requires three of five criteria: “Enrollment of at least 36 students, full-time enrollment, [an] instructional model different from the traditional high school” and that it “awards its own diploma or receives its own federal accountability rating.”
The June 30 grievance demanded remediation via independent fiscal and attendance audits; supplemental information on the relocation, including a public evaluation, ADA accessibility audit, state inspection and administrative review; and that the district cease all relocation efforts. The coalition then bypassed the district and requested the attendance audit from the Idaho Department of Education, which is currently reviewing the request, according to IDE spokesperson Maggie Reynolds.
“The Department of Education staff reviews the request and determines what steps are necessary to verify the claims,” Reynolds told the Reader in a July 8 email. “In this case, regarding student attendance data, the department works with the Office of the State Board of Education to verify the data.”
The Board of Education collects and houses the data from the state’s school information systems, which IDE then uses to calculate and distribute funding to districts and charter schools. According to Reynolds, review timelines vary based on complexity, but it “will probably take a few days to sort through the information in the request and then review the applicable data.”
The coalition has claimed that the alleged attendance inflation could result in “catastrophic, multi-million dollar state funding clawbacks.” IDE has yet to release any findings; however, Reynolds said, “When errors are found, the department asks the school district to correct the data, and funding based on the corrected data is adjusted in that district’s next foundation payment.”
As of press time, District Community Relations Liaison Shelby Struhs told the Reader that the Tuesday, July 14 vote was going ahead as scheduled. The 5 p.m. meeting is open to the public at the district headquarters in Ponderay (365 Triangle Drive). It was immediately unclear whether the district would also hold a special meeting to accommodate more public input, as demanded by the coalition.
“We are offering the elected trustees a clean, cost-free compromise to resolve this dispute locally, transparently and immediately,” wrote former West-Bonner Superintendent Jackie Branum on behalf of the coalition.
“The trustees face a defining choice on July 14: they can grant the public their legal right to an open forum, or they can choose to protect administrative errors and face a formal state investigation alongside a multi-zone voter recall campaign under Idaho Code Section 74-208,” she added.
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