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Parent Supervised Driver Program

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1. Plan your visit to a County Driver’s License Office. Kootenai County offices are by appointment only. You can book a time at one of them here: Driver’s License | Kootenai County Sheriff, ID.  They are often booked out a month or more in advance.  Most other Driver’s License Offices in North Idaho do not accept Kootenai County residents, but the one in St. Maries has been taking walk-ins from any county.

At your appointment, you will need to ask for an Driver Training Instruction Permit for your teen.  Your teen must be at least 14 years and 6 months old.  You will need the following documents:

  1. your teen’s birth certificate
  2. your own photo ID
  3. a document that shows that you and your teen are Idaho residents (such as a school enrollment record, a lease, a utility bill, or an employment record)
  4. your teen’s Social Security card
  5. Verification of School Compliance (a letter from your school office). If you are homeschooling, you don’t need to bring anything with you; you can sign an affidavit for your teen at your appointment to satisfy this requirement.

At your appointment, tell them you are doing the Parent Supervised Driver Program instead of using a driving school.  Please note that at least one parent must have a valid Idaho driver’s license, and that license cannot have been suspended, revoked, or cancelled within the previous 2 years.

2. After you get the photocopy of the Instruction Permit from the Driver’s License Office, contact a public school representative about the online Driver Education course offered through IDLA (Idaho Digital Learning Alliance). You have two options about whom to contact.

  1. You can contact the counselor’s office at the school district you live in.  If you are homeschooled or attend a private school, and you are not sure which school district you live in, you can consult this map, which shows the district boundaries for Kootenai County.

    Here is the contact information for Post Falls High School:

    Phone (208) 773-5411         Email: kristin.hagadone@sd273.com

    Here is the contact information for Lakeland High School:

    Phone (208) 687-0181         Email: mbrumbaugh@lakeland272.org

  2. If you prefer not to deal with your local school district, you can contact Idaho Technical Career Academy, which is a public virtual school open to all Idaho residents. The counselor there is Will Brennan, and his email is wbrennan@idtca.org.

3. The school representative will help you sign up for the next available Driver Education course from IDLA. You cannot sign up for this course directly; you must use a school representative to help you. The IDLA course is online, but has a limited number of slots available, and you must be able to log in at the specified dates and times to participate in the course.  They offer several courses every year, and each one lasts about 6 weeks.  The course fee is $40.

4. During and after the IDLA course, the parent will do in-car training with their teen. The parent must complete and log 6 hours of in-car observation (where the teen observes while the parent drives) and 6 hours of behind-the-wheel instruction (where the teen drives while the parent instructs from the front passenger seat). You can use this log to record these 12 hours.

5. After the IDLA course and the 12 hours of in-car training are both completed, make another appointment with your County Driver’s License Office. (See Step 1 above). You will need the following documents:

  1. The course transcript from IDLA showing the grade received
  2. The log listing the 6 hours of in-car observation and the 6 hours of behind-the-wheel instruction

6. The date that you show these documents to the County Driver’s License Office is the beginning of a minimum 6-month Supervised Instruction Period. For example, if you show your transcript and log book at an appointment on February 10th, then the first day that your teen can take either the road skills test or the written test to get their driver’s license is August 10th. If the day of your appointment is July 10th, then the first day your teen can take either of the tests is January 10th of the following year.  Make a note of the day so you know when you can proceed to the next steps.  During the Supervised Instruction Period, your teen must drive at least 50 hours with an adult in the front passenger seat, and you must log those hours.  The adult must be at least 21 years old, but it doesn’t have to be a parent.  You can use a paper log or any app of your choice to log those 50 hours, but we recommend the Road Ready app.  At least 10 of those hours must be after dark; the other 40 can be in either dark or daylight hours.

7. After at least 6 months have passed and the teen has driven and logged the whole 50 hours with an adult, the next step is to take the road skills test. In Idaho, the road test is given by a private contractor, not a government employee.  These contractors are called Skills Test Examiners.  Click here for a list of licensed Skills Test Examiners in North Idaho.  The Class D License is the regular driver’s license, so you can use any examiners with a D by their name.  If your teen passes the road test, the examiner will give you a sealed envelope.  Do not open this envelope.

8. The final step is to make one more appointment with the County Driver’s License Office.  Bring the sealed envelope and the teen’s learner’s permit to the appointment.  Your teen will need to pass the written test and the vision test before receiving a driver’s license.