BOISE, Idaho — A pair of school districts in the Treasure Valley saw their funding requests fail on Tuesday night.
The West Ada School District's $14 million supplemental levy failed by nearly 4,000 votes - a 10-point margin.
The state's largest school district had initially announced it would seek a $69 million bond in addition to the levy in an effort to keep up with growth but reversed course in April due to the coronavirus pandemic's effect on the economy.
The district had hoped that it could still renew its school operations levy. Unfortunately for the district, it appears the struggling economy may have affected that request as well.
Meanwhile, the Middleton School District must go back to the drawing board once again after voters shot down its $1.5 million supplemental levy. The request failed by four percentage points, or about 150 votes.
The district, which recently adopted a four-day school week, has been unable to pass any funding requests in recent years. And on Tuesday, the district announced that its superintendent had resigned after just 10 months on the job.
Further south, the Jerome Joint School District also got bad news Tuesday night when its $26 million bond request appeared to have failed. As of 12:30 a.m. Wednesday, the Jerome County Elections website showed the request had picked up about 62% of the vote, but needed a 66.7% super-majority in order to pass.
The money would have gone toward the construction of a new elementary school and remodeling of existing schools.
