D93 board member questions if promotions were offered in exchange for boundary changes

IDAHO FALLS — A local school board trustee is accusing fellow board members of offering promotions to school district employees in exchange for favorable school boundary changes.

Bonneville Joint School District 93 Trustee Scott Lynch made the accusation in a June 13 email to Board Chairman Paul Jenkins. EastIdahoNews.com obtained the email through a public records request.

Lynch wrote he was concerned about the behind-the-scenes planning of elementary school boundary changes taking place between March and June of this year.

“A few months later we were facing the issue of boundary changes,” he wrote. “I have been made aware that Board Members, who were impacted by those changes, made ‘promises’ to District employees. If the employee could recommend in a meeting that a certain neighborhood should not move then a promotion could possibly be looked at.”

Lynch didn’t mention the names of the board members or cite any evidence to prove his claim. But he did request Jenkins consider an investigation into the matter. He also said he had reported the issues to the district’s attorney.

In an email conversation with EastIdahoNews.com, Lynch said the accusations were brought to him by constituents. He didn’t comment on the validity of the accusations.

“As those concerns came to my attention, I felt the best course of action would be to share those with ‘my superior,’ which would be the board chairman,” he said. “It’s not my responsibility to speculate on credibility of these concerns but rather share them as they were presented to me by the patrons.”

Jenkins said he took the accusations very seriously and immediately had the district’s attorney investigate the claim. Jenkins said the attorney investigated and determined no inappropriate or illegal behavior had taken place.

Other members of the board and district employees in charge of boundary changes also refute the accusation.

School Improvement Coordinator Scott Woolstenhulme is in charge of coordinating and implementing school boundary changes in District 93. He suspects the accusation centers around an informal April 13 meeting with trustees Greg Calder and Amy Landers and two other school administrators. Woolstenhulme said the meeting was about realigning the boundaries of Woodland Hills Elementary.

Calder and Landers had requested the meeting to explore different options than the ones Woolstenhulme had presented to the board during prior work sessions. Both board members had constituents impacted by the proposed changes.

No decisions were made during that meeting, and Woolstenhulme said after listening to the trustees he was not pressured or offered any sort of incentive to make certain changes.

“There was no pressure to come back to the board with their plan,” Woolstenhulme told EastIdahoNews.com. “I have no idea how a rumor like that would have started, but (a promotion) is no part of any conversation I’ve had with board members.”

Calder and Landers also spoke with EastIdahoNews.com and said at no time have they ever offered a promotion to a school employee in return for recommending a specific boundary change to the board. They also said no efforts were made to change boundaries in a way that would benefit them personally.

Calder’s children are all adults or in high school, so he would not have been directly affected by an elementary boundary change, he said.

Landers does have an elementary schooler, but she said due to where she lives, she was always going to be impacted by a change. Although her first choice would have been to stay at the school, “there were never any option for us not to be moved.”

Jenkins says as far as he is concerned, the matter is now closed.

Lynch’s original email is posted below.