LPOSD talk enrollment, zones and handbooks

PONDERAY — The Lake Pend Oreille School District Board of Trustees in Tuesday's meeting went over district enrollment, 2020 Census information and school handbooks.

Last year enrollment across the district was about 3,458, said Superintendent Tom Albertson. This year the district has seen an increase in 410 students since last year.

There were about 335 students participating in the open enrollment applications. These students are from outside of the LPOSD district, said Albertson. 42 applications were pulled, many may have moved to their requested district or have moved out of the area.

Four applicants were for elementary students, said Kelly Fisher, the district clerk. Students may choose to attend school out of their district to have access to different educational needs or it to be closer to their parent’s place of employment.

With the U.S 2020 Census data now available there is disparity of representation within the trustee zones 5 and zone 2, said Fisher. The requirements for the zone equalization was to be within a 10% variant.

LPOSD is one of the very few districts who will not be required to adjust their trustees zone boundaries, based on the 2020 census data, said Fisher. She reminded the board of their legal obligation to respond to the State Department of Education within 120 days of that information being released.

The largest disparity between trustee zones was 6.2%. This is due to Trustee Carrie Kelly’s zone 5 (downtown Sandpoint) reaching the population of 6,548. The highest number of population is Trustee Gary Supperiger’s zone two (west of highway 95, south of the long bridge) with a population of 6,983, said Fisher.

This 6.2% disparity falls underneath that 10% variant that would require changes to the trustee zones. The board passed the motion 5-0 to maintain the zone maps as is.

The student handbooks were previewed by the board and the superintendent wanted feedback.

Trustee Suppiger said that the total of all the documents came out to well over 380 pages. Since he had only just received the documents earlier that day he moved to table the discussion for a later meeting.

The motion was seconded and passed for the LPOSD school handbooks to be reviewed by the board at a later meeting.

The public comment portion of the Sept. 14, meeting will be covered in a later story. Community members are encouraged to watch past LPOSD meetings on the district website and on their YouTube page.

LPOSD board of trustee meetings are held at the Ponderay Event Center the second and fourth Tuesday of the month at 5 p.m.