Fremont County voters to decide on district split study

FREMONT COUNTY, Idaho (KIFI) - Fremont County voters will be faced with a different question on their ballot as they enter the polls Tuesday. That question is regarding whether or not the Fremont Joint School District should consider conducting a study as to whether or not they should split the district between the north and the south. David Marotz the Co-Interim superintendent for the school district says this vote won't bring any immediate change.

"This is actually voting on whether we should invest in a survey or the research," Marotz said. "So it's not a vote as to whether we actually split the vote. At this point, is should we consider it? Should we do the research?"

Marotz says the main reason this is on the ballot this election process is that people are wanting a little more say as what happens in the district.

"In January, the school board had listening meetings in both North Fremont High School and South Fremont High School, where patrons were able to come in and provide input or feedback, ideas, suggestions, concerns. There was a group of patrons at North Fremont who expressed concern over the way the district was was operating, had concerns about, you know, local control, wanting to have more control over their own area and recommended considering splitting the district." He says after the meetings the district started the conversation as to how to understand this issue. "Superintendent and a number of the board members met with representatives from each end of the community and talked more about this. What did it mean? What were the underlying concerns? From there it was decided, you know what? There are a lot of questions, a lot of concerns. We don't really know all the facts. Let's find out how interested the patrons really are."

Tuesday at the polls won't bring any immediate change to the school district though.

"Then it comes back to the voters at that point. If so, if the vote is yes, we want to consider this, they'll start down that process. If the overall consensus is no, then we won't start that process, but we'll just take the time to go ahead and look at some of those other concerns and try to address those as best we can anyway."

Marotz says, if the study is passed they will then have many hurdles to go through.

"The board will take the results of this study that they'll receive. It'll just it's just a survey. How many people would like to proceed with it? How many would not? They'll take that information and they'll try to decide where to go from there." He says if many during the study say the district should be split then it goes to the state "There's a very lengthy process that's laid out in Idaho code to proceed with with coming up with the proposal, finding out how much it would cost, having hearings, presenting it to the State Department of Education, the state board."

Marotz says after the study then comes back to the them it goes once again to the polls.