Podcast: Back at the West Bonner School District

Logan Finney, Idaho Reports: The West Bonner School District in the northern part of the panhandle isn’t particularly large, nor is it unique in terms of Idaho school districts – but it has been rocked by controversy recently with several contentious board meetings since Branden Durst, a former Democratic state lawmaker and Republican candidate for Superintendent of Public Instruction, has been selected as the new superintendent.

Joining me to discuss the issue, and a recent recall effort filed against two members of the school board, is Kevin Richert from Idaho Education News. Thanks for joining us, Kevin.

Kevin Richert, Idaho Education News:

Hello again. Thanks for having me on board.

IR:

Let’s start this out with a conversation about Durst before we get to that recall effort. Most folks in our Idaho Reports audience will be familiar with Branden Durst and his political involvement, or maybe they remember him from the superintendent primary. But can you give us a refresher on him and his politics?

Richert:

The quick history on Branden Durst is that he’s been kind of a political chameleon and a bit of a political gadfly over the past decade. He was first elected to the legislature in Boise, representing southeast Boise as a Democrat. He served a few terms in the legislature, both in the House and the Senate. He then left and moved to Washington State. He ran for office, ran for the legislature in Washington as a Democrat, lost there, moved back to Idaho. And as you mentioned in 2022 – and I think this is where Branden Durst became more of a figure in state politics – he ran for state superintendent. He was part of that three-way Republican primary for state superintendent. He actually finished second to current superintendent Debbie Critchfield. He defeated incumbent Sherri Ybarra in that primary and carried quite a few counties, especially up north. He won Bonner County, the county we’re talking about here, he won that handily. So, he definitely appealed to hardline conservative voters in that primary. And he’s continued to tack definitely towards the hardline wing of the Republican Party, both as a Republican activist who was active in the Republican convention in 2022 and very active in the education platform that was adopted. Later, he took a job at the Idaho Freedom Foundation earlier in 2023. And in June, he was hired as superintendent in West Bonner School District.

IR:

As you referenced, he had a stint as a lawmaker, and he ran for superintendent, so he does have experience in the education policy realm. I seem to recall he was one of the original bill sponsors for things like the Advanced Opportunities program?

Richert:

Yes.

IR:

His selection as superintendent back in early June has kind of been held up now, because he doesn’t quite qualify for the position of superintendent. Can you tell me about that? Because my understanding is that he’s met all the qualifications except for four years actually working in a school.

Richert:

Right. There are several criteria that are required to get a certificate as an administrator. For example, you need a doctorate degree or a comparable education background. That’s a box that Durst appears to have checked off and says he’s checked off. An administrative internship, you know, definitely an educational background. But you’re right, the big sticking point – and Durst acknowledges that he does not meet this one criteria – is the four years of experience working in a school. So, that leads to the need to then go to the State Board of Education and get an emergency provisional certificate so that he can work as superintendent. That right now is kind of in limbo.

IR:

For reference, can you tell me how common is the use of these emergency provisional certificates? Is this a thing that’s used widely across Idaho?

Richert:

It’s uncommon, but it’s not that uncommon in West Bonner. You go back to earlier this year before Branden Durst entered the picture. In West Bonner, the superintendent resigned, and Susan Luckey was named as the interim superintendent. Luckey had been a teacher up there, I think, for the better part of 20 years. She needed an emergency provisional certificate to serve out the rest of that school year as interim superintendent. Luckey was the other finalist for the for the job in West Bonner, and as you know, trustees selected Durst instead.

IR:

Based on reporting from your colleague Darren Svan over Idaho Education News, the school district hasn’t actually submitted the application for Durst’s provisional certificate because of some disagreements with how they handled Luckey’s certificate. Can you walk me through that briefly?

Richert:

This is where it gets really dense, and I do want to give Darren some credit. He’s been our guy covering West Bonner these past few weeks and he’s broken a lot of news up there. As he reported, it gets into a tiff between West Bonner and the State Board of Education over the way the state board handled Susan Luckey’s emergency certification. West Bonner is saying we’re not going to apply until the state board corrects the error on Luckey’s provisional certificate.

So, again, this becomes a very complicated issue. I think it kind of underscores some of the tension maybe you’re seeing right now between Durst and district officials, perhaps, and the state board and state education policymakers in general.

IR:

The pitch or the appeal made by Durst and the trustees who supported him was that he is a non-conventional candidate. They kind of hired him with the expectation he would come and shake things up, right?

Richert:

Pretty much. That is consistent with Durst’s political M.O., like if you go back to his run for superintendent last year, he was very clear that he was running as a change agent, as somebody who has political experience and would bring a political background into that aspect of the superintendent’s job. You know, kind of leaned into the fact that his background was more in politics than in education. So, what you’re seeing going on right now between West Bonner and the state board over this certification, it seems very consistent with Durst’s political M.O. over the past several years.

IR:

Bringing it back locally to Bonner County, it has not been a unanimous decision up there. There has been quite a bit of contention, including several school board meetings that involved shouting matches. I’ve read some kind of nasty letters to the editor in the Bonner County Daily Bee. Can you walk me through the politics now surrounding this appointment? From where I’m sitting at least, it seems unusual for a school district superintendent job.

Richert:

It’s unusual to see it at this level, but not unprecedented. I mean, superintendent hires sometimes divide a board of trustees, and sometimes there’s tension between trustees and a superintendent. We’ve seen it. It just happens. But I think as it’s happening – right out of the gates now, just as Durst is being hired – I think some of the tension in the community has been directed at two of the trustees. It has been focused partly on some of the comments that they’ve made about the school district in general, especially Keith Rutledge, his comments about teacher pay, about student performance and the need to basically change the whole model of education in that district.

IR:

That gets us to Keith Rutledge and Susan Brown, who are the chair and vice chair of the West Bonner County School Board. After Durst was selected for the job, residents of western Bonner County over in the Priest River area began collecting signatures for a recall campaign against those two trustees, and that effort has qualified for the ballot. Can you talk to me about the significance of that move? How common it is for school board members to be recalled?

Richert:

It’s not unprecedented for school trustees to be recalled, but it’s tough to successfully recall. I mean, we’ve had recall drives in West Ada and recall drives in Middleton just in the past couple of years.

It’s tough to get a recall on the ballot. It’s even tougher to get it passed, because basically it’s a twofold criteria. There are two criteria. You have to get a majority of voters to say, ‘Yes, we want to recall this elected official.’ Then, you have to pass the second threshold. The number of votes for the recall have to exceed the number of votes that the officeholder received in their last election. So, it’s not just enough to get 50% plus one. You’ve got to have 50% plus one out of a pretty significant voter turnout. It’s not a done deal that these recall elections are going to be successful.

And these recall elections have taken on kind of a partisan overtone. Both Rutledge and Brown have received donations from the Bonner County Republican Central Committee. You know, school board elections are becoming less and less nonpartisan as we go. They’re definitely taking on more partisan overtones, and that’s definitely the case in Bonner County. It would be difficult, but not unprecedented and not beyond the realm of possibility for these recalls to be successful.

If these recall elections are successful, why does that matter? It could potentially shift the balance of power on that five-member school board. Durst was hired on a 3-2 vote of the board of trustees, and Rutledge and Brown were two of the three trustees who voted to hire him. If those two trustees are recalled and the remaining three trustees appoint successors, you could see that balance of power on the school board shift. That might lead to a new board of trustees taking a second look at hiring Durst in the first place. We’re getting ahead of ourselves here a little bit, but that’s what is at stake. I mean, whether it involves Durst’s employment status up there or not, if these recall elections are successful, you could see a real shift in the politics on that board really quickly.

IR:

Sure, a few dominoes would have to fall before we got to that point, but it is within the realm of possibility. Getting the two recall elections on the ballot was that first big domino that had to fall.

Taking a brief personal privilege here, when I was a student at Sandpoint High School – in the neighboring school district – there was an attempted recall campaign over one of the school board members who had suggested arming teachers in the schools. You know, now in 2023, that’s kind of an old quaint political debate. But at the time, it was enough that a recall effort was started. Due to some other factors, it didn’t make it onto the ballot.

Richert:

It’s a high hurdle to get an elected official recalled. I think it is more doable at the local level. I mean, we are talking about a couple of hundred votes here. It’s not a monumental task. You hear once in a while people get upset about the governor, or when Tom Luna was state superintendent, they’d be like, ‘Oh, we should recall Tom Luna.’ And you’d have people say, ‘Now, hold on. That is almost mathematically impossible to recall a state elected official.’ It’s not impossible at the local level. It’s just difficult.

IR:

Sure. Of course, Rutledge and Brown are arguing that they should keep their seats. Can you tell me about the arguments for and against the recall now that sample ballots are being prepared?

Richert:

It’s getting nasty. It’s getting kind of personal. You just look at the language on the recall ballots, the arguments for and against keeping Rutledge on the school board – we’ll use his recall as an example. One of the arguments for recalling Rutledge basically accuses him of having a “hidden agenda.” If you read the tone, and you kind of read between the lines, people wanting to recall Rutledge are basically questioning whether he supports public education, period. Rutledge fires back and says, ‘It’s really important to keep me in office (and by extension, Brown. She isn’t mentioned, but it’s pretty clear that he’s referring to her as well). It’s really important to keep this conservative core on the school board.’ He’s been saying all along that we need to show what happens when you have conservative leadership in the school board and in the school district, and let patrons see what happens and what a difference that can make. So, yes, this has taken on a very personal and a very partisan and very ideological tone.

IR:

As we mentioned, the organizers did reach the signature threshold to initiate a recall election. That will happen in certain voting precincts in Bonner County on August 29^th, so about a month from now.

Richert:

Yeah.

IR:

Kevin, from your perspective, is this an extension of the pandemic politics that we saw on school boards throughout the last couple of years? Is this something new, more about conservative governance versus the old way of doing things? Is it a little bit of both? What’s your read of the situation?

Richert:

I think it’s a mix of a lot of different things, Logan. I think you’re right. School board politics changed in Idaho and across the nation after the pandemic. Parents became a lot more upset about schools. They became a lot more upset about losing in-person learning, or districts that imposed mask mandates, and that extended into concerns about indoctrination or critical race theory or DEI or, you know, insert your term that you want to use there. It became much more polarized, the school board politics at the national level. We saw it and Idaho was certainly not immune to that.

So, I think what you’re seeing in West Bonner is an extension of that. I think West Bonner is illustrative of a lot of things that we’ve been seeing going on in rural education in a lot of different ways. The political nature of this school board, and school board politics in West Bonner, that’s certainly an example of what we’re seeing on a larger plane. I think the financial issues that this district is facing are very symbolic of what we’re seeing in a lot of school districts across the state. Back in May, back before Branden Durst was even hired or his name was even floated as a candidate for superintendent, voters up there rejected a supplemental levy. It was the same election that Coeur d’Alene passed a supplemental levy after a really heated local election, not too far away. West Bonner’s levy failed, and quickly trustees were saying, ‘Look, we’re going to have to cut extracurricular activities. We’re going to have to cut sports.’ Now, you know, Durst has walked that back a little bit and said, ‘I think we can find funding for some of these extracurricular and co-curricular activities.’ But that’s what the district was talking about. That’s what a lot of districts have to face if they can’t get a supplemental levy passed, and that blows a 25% or 30% hole in the budget in some districts. I mean, these are big elections. So, what you’re seeing of the financial straits facing West Bonner are certainly not unique. Any district that’s had trouble passing a supplemental levy has had a similar kind of financial reckoning.

The reason we’re talking about Branden Durst and the reason we’re talking about the superintendent seat in West Bonner – a small district, far away from Boise – is that a lot of these small districts just have trouble finding qualified applicants, whether it’s for superintendent or for teaching positions. West Bonner had three applicants for the superintendent’s position: Branden Durst and Susan Luckey, who we mentioned needed an emergency certification to work in an interim capacity until June. They had a third applicant who actually, I believe, met the criteria to be a superintendent. That candidate withdrew from consideration. So, West Bonner was faced with two options, neither of whom were candidates who met the criteria to be a superintendent.

If you think it’s just happening when districts have to fill a superintendent position, guess again. You have districts facing this same kind of question over and over again when they have to fill teaching positions. It’s a tough situation in rural Idaho, recruiting teachers, retaining teachers, and making ends meet. All of what’s happening West Bonner – it’s a canary in the coal mine.

IR:

We will keep an eye on how that recall election turns out at the end of next month. You can head over to www.idahoednews.org to read all of this great reporting.

Kevin Richert, thanks for your time this week.

Richert:

Thanks, Logan.