School leaders avoid $500k loss of federal funds

Leaders of two school districts Tuesday night, agreed to a “tuition” plan that’s been in dispute for months, which threatened to cost them over half a million dollars that would otherwise go to educating their students.

Everyone was relieved at a joint meeting of the boards of directors of the Nespelem and Grand Coulee Dam School districts.

“Thank you so much for working hard to make that agreement successful,” GCDSD Board President Rich Black said. “I know it wasn’t exactly what you had in mind. It wasn’t exactly what we had in mind.”

At issue was the way federal “Impact Aid” — allotted to school districts greatly impacted by federal land ownership that prevents districts from collecting taxes on untaxable federal lands — would be shared between them.

Nespelem board President Jolene Marchand, who has served on the board for over 30 years, said Tuesday that Nespelem has sent over $20 million of Impact Aid to Grand Coulee Dam School District.

They’ve been doing that for decades, but the federal Education Department says to do it legally they must implement a tuition agreement and charge each other for accepting students from the other district. Exactly how to do that got into the weeds of proposals.

The districts have been negotiating for months to decide who will get what percentage of those funds that go to Nespelem School, which qualifies for a higher rate of payment but whose students mostly have gone to Lake Roosevelt Jr/Sr High School after eighth grade — until this year, when Nespelem decided to add a high school program, one grade at a time.

This year, Grand Coulee Dam has been getting 75 percent of it, Nespelem 25 percent.

Nespelem has been seeking to keep 27.5 percent.

Applications for the funds must be submitted online by June 30, and neither board was feeling the love from the other, haggling over the percentage points.

It appeared possible they might each stand their ground and jointly lose over $550,000 of the money by filing for it separately.

That changed Monday. Nespelem’s board met in special session at noon to consider a counteroffer, conjured between the two district superintendents. Grand Coulee would give on points if Nespelem would increase the length of their agreement to two years, so the negotiation would not be yearly.

Nespelem voted to accept 28 percent of the funds for two years instead of one. Grand Coulee Dam gets 72 percent.

At GCDA’s regular meeting Monday night, that board, too, agreed to see the bigger picture.

Director Shannon Nicholson said the counteroffer wasn’t ideal, “but in the long term, when we see the back and forth … it really amounts to very little in terms of the financial impact on our children, somewhere in the range of $20,000 to $25,000. And the potential hit that could have on us is upwards of $300,000.”

Nicholson moved to accept the offer; George LaPlace seconded the motion. It passed unanimously.