Podcast: West Bonner School Trustees Recalled

Logan Finney, Idaho Reports: Hello, and welcome to the Idaho Reports podcast. I’m Logan Finney. Joining me to discuss this week’s school election results, including the West Bonner County School District recall, is Kevin Richert from Idaho Education News. Thanks for joining us.

Kevin Richert, Idaho Education News: Hi, Logan.

IR: Before we get to that recall election up in Bonner County, can you talk to me about the other items that were on the ballot this week? Several school districts had funding measures.

Richert: Yes, and by and large, the bonds and levies passed. There were seven levies and bonds that passed on Tuesday night and one failed. The one that failed was in the Shoshone district in the Magic Valley.

The ones that kind of jumped out at me, Logan, are two. Bonneville School District is a fast-growing district in eastern Idaho. They got a bond issue passed that will basically allow them to build a new elementary school over there. It also creates more space within the district to handle all-day kindergarten programs. A very similar proposal failed in May.

A fairly large one was a supplemental levy in the Vallivue School District in Canyon County. Again, a fast-growing district. They were able to get a supplemental levy passed, and like a lot of the supplemental levies that were on the ballot on Tuesday night – and supplemental levies in general, as I’ve written about in the past – the bulk of the money in Vallivue, and I think the bulk of the money that was passed Tuesday night, is going to go to staff salaries and benefits, teacher salaries and benefits, employee salaries and benefits.

IR: Sometimes state lawmakers are critical of what they call repeat issues or repeat questions, like you just referenced over in Bonneville. Were there any substantial changes between the last attempt and this attempt that succeeded?

Richert: It was fairly similar between the two. I mean, what Bonneville has been pushing for, and pushed for again, is space for elementary school kids. They were overcrowded, and that allows them also to create some space for continuing their all day kindergarten programs.

So, you know, you’re right, this has been a bone of contention at the statehouse for quite some time. And obviously, we’ve seen consolidation of the school bond and levy elections. You know, there was a bill actually last legislative session that would have gotten rid of the August bond and levy elections. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a similar move in 2024. These are very contentious issues at the statehouse, and you touched on one of the reasons why.

IR: All right. Well, let’s move up north to Bonner County. First just for context, can you remind us what’s been going on in the West Bonner County School District over the last several months?

Richert: There’s been a lot going on in the West Bonner School district over the past few months. And really it came to a head, I would say it came to a head partly in May when West Bonner had a supplemental levy on the ballot, and that one failed narrowly. And then I think things really sort of caught fire in early summer when the district hired Branden Durst, a former state legislator, former state superintendent candidate, a former staff member with the Idaho Freedom Foundation.

He was hired as superintendent. It raised a lot of questions, not just about his qualifications or lack thereof, but also raised questions about the ideological direction that the district was going to go. A lot of conservatives, including Durst himself I think, were pointing to this as an opportunity to say people are going to see what a conservative-run school district looks like. Well, probably not, as a result of the the recall elections Tuesday night. Two of the the trustees who are aligned with Durst were recalled, and recalled resoundingly.

IR: Right. There were two trustees on the ballot. There was the board vice chair, Susan Brown, and the board chair, Keith Rutledge. Can you remind us what complaints residents of west Bonner County had about the board? Not just the hiring of Durst, but there were also some other issues percolating in the district.

Richert: You know, as I read the ballot language, you’re right, opponents raised a lot of concerns, basically saying that the two trustees had what they described as a “hidden agenda” that opposed public education. I don’t know how how hidden it was, really, because there was so much public discord and there was so much infighting within the district about the direction that the district was going. So, yeah, but I think the Durst hire became the flash point in this whole debate.

IR: Now it is the morning after the election and we have unofficial results from the Bonner County clerk. Can you tell me just how resounding those results were?

Richert: They’re unofficial, but they’re very decisive. 63% of voters voted to recall Rutledge, the chair, and 66% voted to recall Susan Brown, who’s the vice chair. That tells you only part of the story because in recall elections, in order to recall any elected official – whether it’s a school trustee or the governor, anywhere in between – you have to get majority support for the recall. You also have to have more people voting for the recall than voted for these elected officials in their previous, most recent election.

So, that happened in both of these cases. And it happened, again, resoundingly. The turnout up there was was pretty staggering. You had over 2,000 people voting in these two recall elections compared to, I think, there was about 800 people who voted in these trustee races the last time around. So, yeah, people were fired up about this election. There’s no question about that.

IR: Sure. Just to reiterate that recall point, because I think it’s really important. For example, if I ran for school board and I got 100 votes and won my seat, in order to recall me you’d have to get 101 votes in favor of the recall. Right?

Richert: Exactly, and we have seen in the past that that threshold, you know, that’s an important threshold. We have had trustee recall elections in the not too distant past in Idaho where a majority of voters said, “yeah, I do want a recall,” but there weren’t enough of those yes votes to to trigger the recall. So, it’s a big deal.

IR: Yeah. Can you talk to me a little bit more about that? Because I believe you wrote something on Idaho Education News about this very issue.

Richert: I went back in the history to look at recall elections. They’re pretty rare. You know, you hear a lot of talk about recalls, right? You hear disgruntled voters say, “oh, we’ve just got to recall these guys.” It doesn’t happen very often, because there are a lot of things that have to happen. You know, first, you have to get enough signatures to get a recall on the ballot. That takes some time and effort. Then again, you have to meet those those two thresholds to get a recall through at the ballot box.

So, I went back and looked the most recent successful recall elections involving school trustees. You’ve got to go back to 2020 and White Pine, where a school trustee was recalled over – yeah, guess what? It was 2020. It had to do with the pandemic. This is a trustee who supported measures that would require face masks in in school classrooms or on school busses if social distancing couldn’t be maintained, so that trustee got recalled. Then you have to go back to 2016. There were successful recall elections in the West Ada district, the largest district in the state. In 2015, there were a couple of successful recalls in Caldwell. They just don’t happen very often.

IR: Looking at the results here, when they were first elected, Rutledge and Brown earned 485 and 359 votes respectively, so those were the thresholds that the proponents of the recall had to beat. Looking at the unofficial results, the folks who voted against the recall – so, in support of the two board members – Rutledge got 454 and Susan Brown got 322. So, they may have even lost a little bit of support from when they were first elected to the board.

Richert: Yes, it was a very indelible message that voters sent on Tuesday night. And you know, for a district that has been going through a lot of discord and a lot of strife, it’ll be very interesting to see what happens now.

IR: What have the public reactions to the outcome been like?

Richert: Our reporter Darren Svan had some reactions in his story on Wednesday. As you might expect, folks who were pushing for the recall were ecstatic with the results. Rather tellingly, as of 2:45 on Wednesday afternoon, the day after the election, as of the last time I checked his X feed…

IR: We’re among friends, you can call it Twitter.

Richert: I’m always going to call it Twitter. I mean, you know, it’s always going to be Twitter to me. Durst has not tweeted – or posted or whatever you want to call it – since election night, which is somewhat out of character for someone like Branden Durst, who likes to express his views on social media platforms.

IR: Do we know how this will affect Durst and his position at the West Bonner County School District? Because Rutledge and Brown were two of the three members who had voted to hire him in the first place.

Richert: Well, that’s the big question, right? I mean, at the very least, you’ve had a shift in the balance of power on that school board. You have what was a board that was controlled by three conservatives, three hard-right conservatives. Now you have three remaining trustees, two of whom opposed the Durst hire in the first place. So you’ve got, you know, definitely a shift.

So at the very least, even if nothing else happens, Durst’s plans to really kind of recast this district and really kind of reinvent this district as, you know, a conservative-run school district. That’s not going to happen because he’s not going to have the support on the school board to do maybe a lot of the things that he was hoping to do. That’s assuming that everybody stays in place.

We’ve seen this before, too. You know, school boards hire superintendents. That’s a big part of their job. And sometimes they fire superintendents. So, yes, the first place you wonder about now is, is Brandon Durst or his days numbered as the superintendent up there? And maybe, but maybe not. It’s such a flux situation right now because, yes, you have two of the three remaining trustees who opposed Brandon Durst as a hire. But here we are, it’s August 30th. You have another school election in West Bonner in November. And guess what? All three of those trustees are on the ballot.

So, who knows what’s going to happen with the November elections. That’s not a lot of time between late August and November. I mean, it’s a process where I think the remaining trustees have 90 days to look for successors within that district, and if they don’t get it done within 120 days, the county commissioners come in and make those appointments. So it’s going to be a while potentially before you have replacements on the school board. Who’s winding up making those decisions about the replacements? The election may have may affect that. There’s a lot of uncertainty about what’s going to happen next in West Bonner, even though you’ve got a very clear message from voters Tuesday night.

IR: Sure. Let’s take a couple steps back in that process here, because now on this five member board, two of the seats have been recalled. What’s the very next step for the board? What happens with those two seats?

Richert: Okay, let’s walk through it. The very first thing that has to happen now is that the three trustees have to declare the vacancies, and that starts the clock ticking. Like I said, I believe they would then have 90 days to look for replacement trustees within the two zones that Rutledge and Brown represent. You have to look within those zones first. If they can’t find willing volunteers in those zones, they can then open it up and look for replacement trustees anywhere within the school district boundaries. If they can’t get it done within that 120 day window, then it falls to the county commissioners to fill those vacancies.

This all maybe sounds academic, but it really isn’t. A lot of school districts – especially smaller districts – have had a lot of trouble over the years finding people to step up and say, “yes, I’ll be a school trustee,” because, you know, these are volunteer positions. And over the past few years, school trustees have been paid in agony, because basically they have to deal with very unpopular and very controversial things.

IR: Especially exacerbated with the pandemic.

Richert: From the pandemic to today, where now you’ve got a lot of social issues that are clouding school board politics, it’s kind of a thankless job. It’ll be interesting to see how the replacement process unfolds.

IR: Kevin Richert with Idaho Education News, thanks for joining us on the podcast this week.

Richert: Thanks, Logan.