SANDPOINT — Between school shopping, student orientations and figuring out schedules, students have spent the past couple weeks preparing to head back to school.

While school doesn't start until after the holiday weekend, teachers and staff in the Lake Pend Oreille School District had their first day of school on Thursday, which kicked off with the annual "Welcome Back Breakfast." The event is sponsored by the district's Nutrition Services Department and Panhandle Alliance for Education. The breakfast was followed by an assembly at Sandpoint High School, which began with PAFE board members presenting a check to SHS Principal Tom Albertson for more than $7,000 for upgrades to the school's weight room.

"My kids spent a lot of time in there, but it has done its job and is probably a little past its prime," PAFE board member Kendon Perry said of the weight room.

Perry, along with PAFE board members Kelly Prior and Tom Puckett, organized the Lake Pend Oreille Poker Run this summer. Half of the money raised was donated to PAFE, and the other half was donated to the SHS weight room.

Geraldine Lewis, PAFE board president, said PAFE has put nearly $1.7 million into LPOSD classrooms since its inception in 2003. This year alone, PAFE awarded $102,950 in grants to local teachers.

"So if you have ever received a PAFE grant, thank you — thank you for going that extra mile," Lewis told the teachers. "That is how we are able to help you and to support what you are doing ... I am sure you guys know the powerful impact you have on all the kids, but I just want to tell you again how much it matters."

In addition to teacher grants, Lewis said PAFE supports education in other ways, including $40,000 to instructional coaches this year, and a $95,000 contribution to the district's new English Language Arts curriculum, among other grants.

Lewis said PAFE recently did a community survey that garnered more than 550 responses. In highlighting a few of the outcomes from the survey, Lewis said when asked if education funding should be increased, 80 percent of respondents said yes. When asked where LPOSD should increase spending, the number one answer was increase teacher pay; the number two answer was improve facilities, she said. When asked to rank five "priorities, by level of importance, education was at the top of the list, followed by increasing job opportunities, affordable housing and health care.

"So there were some hard choices, but education matters most to this community," Lewis said. "So just have that assurance that this community is behind you, behind what you do, and PAFE will continue to support your efforts however we can."

Going back to a more serious tone, however, Woodward noted that the district saw a 3.6-percent gain in ELA student progress, versus a 1.6 percent average state gain. The district saw a 4-percent gain in mathematics, he said, also higher than the state average gain of 1.7 percent.

"That is very good news," he said.

A study was done, he said, on the "world's best performing school systems and how they come out on top." Woodward said what the study found was what mattered most for those schools was to "get the right people to become teachers, develop those teachers into effective instructors, and ensure that the system is able to deliver the best possible instruction for every child."

"We know what works," Woodward said. "If we know what works ... shouldn't it be non-negotiable that we do those things in our classrooms? If you don't have the right kind of culture, it can be a dangerous thing. I believe we have the right kind of culture here to say it's non-negotiable because we know these things work. So let's support each other in doing those things."

Mary Malone can be reached by email at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter @MaryDailyBee.