Vote yes on school levies Feb. 9

01/22/2010

By Erin Schultz, Schools First

The campaign to renew the Seattle Public Schools levies hosted a campaign phone drive Jan. 20 at the campaign headquarters as King County Elections mailed out more than 360,000 ballots for the Feb. 9 special election.

PTA representatives, educators, current and former students and Schools First supporters made calls to thousands of voters reminding them to check their mailboxes and encouraging them to vote yes on Propositions 1 and 2, the Seattle Public Schools Operating and Capital levies.

Central District Resident Ryan Curren came to the event for his 2-year-old daughter.

According to Ryan, “I want her schools to be good when she gets there. Education is just generally underfunded, so anything we can do to supplement the state’s insufficient funding is essential. I can’t imagine what our schools would look like without this levy funding.”

Another Schools First supporter and Ballard resident Noel Frame said, “I am here because even though I don’t have kids, public schools matter for all of our kids and throughout our community. We can’t afford to not pass these levies when they are nearly one-quarter of the budget.”

Levy funding currently accounts for 23 percent of the operations budget and 100 percent of the capital improvements budget.

Proposition 1, the Capital Levy, funds safety improvements, classroom upgrades to our schools, athletic field replacement, and improvements to technology for every classroom.

Proposition 2, the Operations Levy, helps pay for instructional programs, student activities, staff salaries, bilingual and special education services, technology infrastructure, student transportation and security and maintenance.

  • share
  • Post to Twitter

We encourage our readers to comment. No registration is required. We ask that you keep your comments free of profanity and keep them civil. They are moderated and objectionable comments will be removed.

Comments

Prop 1 - BTA Levy

Submitted by Melissa Westbrook (not verified) on Mon, 01/25/2010 - 15:12.

es, I know, how can a Seattle schools parent say no to a school levy? When it's using a garden hose to put out a forest fire, that's how.
I'm a long-time activist in our district and I write for the Seattle education blog, Save Seattle Schools (saveseattleschools.blogspot.com). I ask you to consider the following:
- the district has a $500M backlog in maintenance. This is neither normal nor good for any district. We got here because our district has continued (for at least 15+ years) to cut the basic maintenance budget and defer maintenance. The outcome of that is easy to see; you, the taxpayer, get to pay more for repairs that would have cost less if done sooner.
- the head of Maintenance, Mark Pflueger, told a Board committee that he does NO maintenance "all I do is put out fires". His budget is a little more than half of what the district spent in 1979.
- we cannot "levy" our way out of the backlog. This levy will hit maybe 10-15% and our next BEX (remodeling/renovation) is 3 years off and neither of them can be done fast enough to really help
- the $270M budget gets eaten up fast by technology issues, athletic fields, 5 reopening schools (that's $50M right there). There is not much left for schools that have been waiting for maintenance.
-John Stanford, in 1995, wanted a maintenance levy OVER a technology levy because the maintenance backlog was at $185M. If John Stanford was worried about the backlog at $185M in 1995, why isn't our district when it's at almost $500M in 2010?

My prediction is it will pass BUT they will come to taxpayers in a few short years with a FOURTH levy to attack the backlog. Is it fair to our friends and neighbors who don't have children in the system or don't have children at all, to pay more because our district doesn't take care of the facilities that taxpayers invest in? I don't think so.

Understanding the severity

Submitted by Guest (not verified) on Thu, 01/28/2010 - 16:43.

Understanding the severity of this level of backlog (I've watched it maul the budgets and facilities in states even worse funded than Washington), what would you propose instead of the current measures going to voters? I agree, watching funds for maintenance fall to obviously unsustainable levels is not going to do anyone, be it our children or future generations, any favors... and even for property owners now, it could potentially hurt in the short-term if a major problem arises and needs fixing.

So is the solution to create a larger levy now, and devote it more heavily to the $500m backlog? Would that help, or is this a symptom of a larger problem in our overall funding for education?

As you seem to have considerable history with the system as a long-time activist, I'd be curious to hear what you would call a more comprehensive solution, and how we could start now.

On a related note, would

Submitted by Guest (not verified) on Thu, 01/28/2010 - 16:48.

On a related note, would rejecting the current proposals help the situation, or just further the backlog? I'm hesitant to effectively punish our schools for asking for funding when their needs are obviously so high. Couldn't that sort of back-lash against the levy actually cause greater degradation of facilities?

How long would it take to craft, and bring to voters, a more comprehensive proposal given where we're standing now?