Use a Licensed Instructor for Driver’s Education
1. Sign up with Crusader Driving School. Choose #1 (Online Course) under Regular Teen Driver Education. Within one business day of signing up, you will receive an invoice. Once that invoice has been paid, your teen can begin the online course while you are waiting for your appointment with a County Driver’s License Office (See Step 2 below). Crusader Driving School partners with Brian Johns of Idaho Online Driver Education to fulfill the 30-hour classroom instruction requirement through his online course. This course is completed at your own pace. Your teen can sign in at any time of day that is convenient and spend as much or as little time as they want each day working through the 30 hours. There are some mandatory waiting times between units, so the minimum completion time for the online course is 8 days. Your teen must complete all 30 hours of the online course and pass the final exam. You will receive an email when your teen has passed the course.
If you would rather use a different online course that has been approved by the State of Idaho, please contact us to make special arrangements.
2. 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:
- your teen’s birth certificate
- your own photo ID
- 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)
- your teen’s Social Security card
- 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, they will ask you what driving school to send the permit to. Tell them Crusader Driving School in Post Falls. Save the photocopy of the permit they give you.
3. Reply to the welcome email you received from Crusader Driving School when you signed up, and attach a scan or picture of the photocopy of the permit. You can also call us at 208-298-9068 to schedule a time to drop off the hard copy if you prefer.
4. Once your teen has passed the online course and we have received the photocopy of the permit, sign up for the behind-the-wheel lessons. Choose #2 (In-car Lessons) under Regular Teen Driver Education. Please note that if you request in-car lessons during the months of January through April, the price is higher. Please click here for full details on our tax season surcharge. If your teen completes the online course during those 4 months, but you do not want to pay the surcharge, please wait until May 1st to request in-car lessons.
Your teen must go through 4 lessons of 1 ½ hours each with our licensed instructor. After you sign up for in-car lessons, we will call you to schedule those 4 sessions at times that work for both of us. Generally we schedule the first lesson within one week of when you sign up.
5. After your teen has successfully completed the fourth lesson, the instructor will hand over your teen’s permit to you.
6. The date that you receive your teen’s permit from our instructor is the beginning of a minimum 6-month Supervised Instruction Period. For example, if your teen’s last lesson is 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 teen’s last lesson 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. In most cases, parents or other family members can teach their teens just fine during these 50 hours. But there may be reasons you would like your teen to drive some or all of those 50 hours with our licensed instructor. For example, some parents are too busy to get all the hours done within 6 months, but don’t want their teens to have to wait to get their driver’s licenses. In other families, most of the driving is done with the whole family in the car, and some parents are worried about putting their other children at risk by having a student driver at the wheel. In some cases, parents prefer for their teens to have the benefit of more driving in a vehicle with instructor override pedals. If for any reason you would like your teen to drive any of those 50 hours with us, we are happy to offer further professional instruction at our normal hourly rate. Choose “Learner’s Permit Practice” when you sign up.
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 another 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.