POST FALLS — Voters in the Post Falls School District on Tuesday approved a supplemental levy for $4.955 million per year for two years.

A total of 998 voters (75.4 percent) were in favor of the levy and 326 were against.

A simple majority vote (50 percent plus one) was needed for the supplemental levy to pass.

"We are very thankful," Post Falls Superintendent Jerry Keane said. "Our community has always said that it is a priority to make sure kids have quality programming. This is a testament to what staff do with children every day and a good indicator that our children are being taken care of."

Keane said Post Falls has relied on supplemental funding over the past 30 years. The last time such a levy failed that he can recall was in the mid-1980s. A proposal was re-run later in the year and passed.

Tuesday's levy request was a $300,000 increase per year from the district's existing levy, but will not increase taxes from the current rate due to the district's increased taxable value because of growth and the restructuring of the district's construction bonds.

"We try to balance our needs with that the community can afford," Keane said. "We try to be as frugal as possible, but at the same time we have an obligation to take care of students in the best possible fashion. It's a balancing job."

The funds will be spent on facility maintenance, building supplies, maintaining or reducing class sizes and updating curriculum, the bus fleet and technology.

"The money is used to supplement the basic state appropriation," Keane said. "The increase will be used specifically to catch up with our curricular adoptions. We deferred those adoptions during the Great Recession and we are way behind. For example, the purchase of Language Arts curricular adoption will cost close to $1 million."

Seventeen percent of the district's budget is from the supplemental levy.

A home valued at $200,000 with an $80,000 homeowners' exemption will pay about $202.80 a year ($16.90 per month) for the supplemental levy.

The district will collect the same number of dollars for school property taxes that it collected last year and the year before. Therefore, residents' property taxes for schools won't increase from the current level.

School officials said the district's average supplemental levy rate per student of $814 is one of the lowest in the state.

Keane said if the levy hadn't passed there would have been a "dramatic" cut in services. The district would have had the option of floating another proposal in May or August.