‘My goal is to keep the alternative school open’

Lake Pend Oreille High School’s historic building to close in 2027

By Soncirey Mitchell
Reader Staff

The Lake Pend Oreille School District has recently confirmed its intention to close the 117-year-old Lake Pend Oreille High School facility at 1005 N. Boyer Ave., in Sandpoint, planning to move its students into the portables behind Sandpoint Middle School by the start of the 2027-’28 school year. 

LPOHS has 75 students for the current school year; however, according to LPOSD Superintendent Becky Meyer, 30 of them will graduate in the spring. Given the cost of running a school and maintaining an aging building, the district has determined that LPOHS is “financially unfeasible to continue as-is.”

“I was the principal there for five years — I worked there. I understand how important the alternative school is. My goal is to keep the alternative school open,” Meyer told the Reader in a Feb. 17 interview.

“I understand people are very sentimental and are attached to the building, but at some point I have to look at the big picture for the district,” she later added. “I’m responsible, financially, for the taxpayer dollars, and I want to be very fiscally conservative and very responsible with the taxpayer dollars.”

LPOHS has called the North Boyer facility home for decades, serving “at-risk youth,” such as students who are pregnant, failing classes, battling addiction and living through “serious personal, emotional or medical problems,” according to requirements laid out in the Idaho Administrative Procedure Act. In the experience of Idaho State Board of Education member and former-Dist. 1 Sen. Shawn Keough, most districts in Idaho find alternative schools to be important additions to their communities.

“I think that districts have seen value in the alternative schools that they have, in terms of getting students that might not otherwise finish, to finish,” Keough told the Reader. “[For students] that have different circumstances, for those students that would just prefer to not be in a traditional high school setting — they thrive in an alternative school. So, those districts that see the value in being inclusive to all their students — regardless of where that education takes place — tend to continue to support them.”

LPOHS has played an equally integral role in Bonner County, giving thousands of students the opportunity to volunteer within the community and move on to successful lives and careers. The school maintains its own tight-knit community that retired 27-year LPOHS art teacher Randy Wilhelm said holds students “accountable” and creates a “culture of family.”

“One hundred percent of the kids in LPO have been identified as probably not going to graduate, and I think our graduation rate is, like, 70%,” Wilhelm told the Reader.

According to Idaho Education News, LPOHS had a graduation rate of 63.2% in 2022 — 23% lower than Sandpoint High School’s 86% that year.

The alternative system is designed to “meet students where they are,” according to Wilhelm, offering a smaller student-to-teacher ratio and an emphasis on hands-on learning.

“Most of the kids there are really discouraged learners,” Wilhelm told the Reader. “They’re very out-of-the-box thinkers, and so that’s kind of challenging sometimes in a traditional classroom. I think they’ve been made to feel that they’re not very smart.”

Meyer underscored the importance of the alternative high school to area students, adding that the district determined the “best-case scenario” to balance its necessity with limited state funding would be to cut electives offered at LPOHS and, eventually, move them to a centralized campus. Students will remain in the current LPOHS building for the 2026-’27 school year for core classes, but will have the option to bus back and forth to SHS for their electives.

“They will pick electives from Sandpoint High School … or, if this is somebody that doesn’t want to go back to Sandpoint High School … we will have independent study-based credits for them, so nobody is going to be forced to take the electives there if they don’t want to,” said Meyer.

Students will also be able to earn work-based credits through internships and job shadows, and have full access to the district’s new Career-Technical Education center, which will open in the fall and offer courses on nursing, carpentry and more. Still, Wilhelm and others close to the issue are skeptical of the new elective system.

“The vast majority of [the students] have come from Sandpoint High School, and have negative experiences. They’re gonna drop out before they go back to Sandpoint High School,” said Wilhelm.

The move from LPOHS will come after renovations are completed at SMS, creating a small campus within walking distance of SHS and the students’ electives. According to Meyer, LPOSD intends to work with students and teachers to customize the portables so they can “make it their own, special campus.”

“Do they want to do an arboretum? Do they want to do an outdoor facility? Do they want to have pickleball? What do they want to do to make that corner of the campus their own?” said Meyer.

As for the original campus, LPOSD’s 2023-’24 Building Condition Evaluation rated the century-old structure “unsatisfactory.”

“We get a safety inspection every year,” Meyer said. “It’s definitely not unsafe, it’s just a lot. There’s a lot of maintenance and upkeep and definitely things — facility-wise — that need to be addressed.”

The district has already allocated a portion of the money from the state’s School District Facilities Fund — established in 2023 to distribute sales tax and lottery revenue to schools — to improvements at SMS. Along with LPOHS, SMS is one of six schools in the district to receive an evaluation of “unsatisfactory,” including Southside Elementary, Home School Academy, Northside Elementary and Washington Elementary.

“[T]he board will have to decide what they want to do with it,” Meyer told the Reader, referring to the LPOHS building. “They certainly could put it up and sell it; I’m not sure if that’s what they’ll decide to do.”

Should LPOSD wish to consider the sale, the board will have to discuss and vote in a public meeting, then solicit an assessment to determine the property’s value.

Following budget cuts mandated by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and the passage of Idaho House Bill 93 in 2025, which made $50 million in public funds available to private schools by offering $5,000 tax credits per student, Idaho’s public education system is facing an uncertain financial future. Given the loss of revenue, Meyer asked district staff to draft a document contemplating how the sale of the aging facility could benefit the district as a whole, though it has yet to be finalized and shared with the board.

“I want to be able to eventually explain to the community and parents and staff, and so I asked people to put together a draft to get started,” said Meyer.

“I see those discussions taking place — the ‘What if?’ discussions, predicated on what the Legislature is going to do this year,” Keough told the Reader.