On school bonds, and the New Selfishness(tm)

My local school district (very small, 1400 students, one each of an elementary school, a middle school and a high school -- we're a ferry-only island so we've got to do this all ourselves) has finally managed to pass a $47.7m bond issue to replace some of the high school's existing classroom buildings with one self-contained classroom building.

I say "self-contained" because the existing high school's classrooms (either built, or last worked-on in the mid-70's although some of the building shells are decades older than that) are currently spread among six free-standing buildings, each with it's own independent heating system, most with only outside entry doors for the classrooms, and only three of which are connected to one another by covered walkways let alone internal hallways.

And it gets better. Most of the glass is still single-paned, some of the buildings don't have their own restrooms, everything's too small, there's major ADA issues all over the place. This is a 1970's high school in 2011.

I ran for school board in 1996 and just narrowly (thank $DIETY) lost to a very effective candidate; at that time people who were eyes-open and who could see what the high school was and was inevitably going to become with the passing of time began to talk about replacing it.

That was the late 1990's.

An active process of discussion, directed toward placing a bond issue before the voters, began in the mid-2000's.

There were meetings, complaints were raised, complaints were addressed, the proposal was cut back, complaints were raised, complaints were addressed, the proposal was cut back, complaints were raised, complaints were addressed, the proposal was cut back...

You get the idea.

You'd think that this would be a slam-dunk, but no.

All that culminated with the actual placing of a bond issue to replace and rework a portion of the high school before the voters in 2009.

It was voted down.

The alleged issues against passage were legion: the economy wasn't right; it was too costly; enrollment was declining, so why bother; poorer households on the Island couldn't afford it; etc etc etc.

One of the most interesting dynamics of the debate was that, as soon as one objection was addressed, the same opponents would come up with another objection.

You could never get the entire list at one time. There was always one more problem.

So the group tasked with developing the proposal held more meetings, complaints were raised, complaints were addressed, the proposal was cut back, complaints were raised, complaints were addressed...

Are we seeing a pattern here?

The well-intentioned, quite intelligent people (I wasn't one of them!) tasked with writing the bond measure bent over backwards again and again, and still there remained a very small, but very vocal groups who were simply not ever going to be swayed.

And they were *very* vocal, as small groups in small communities can be.

So the most recent bond issue went before the voters (again) this year with two components:

Proposition 1 demolishes two high school buildings, builds a new integrated classroom building as a replacement, does other much-needed work at the high school, and does much needed work at both the middle- and elementary schools.

Proposition 2 replaces the grass athletic field and the 1970's-era cinder track (Remember those? No high school track meets have been held at our high school in at least ten years. Other high schools simply refuse to compete here.) with a new synthetic field and track and does some desperately-needed ADA work to the single, un-roofed grandstand.

(Let me say that public athletic facilities (which are actually managed by the local Parks District through an interlocal agreement) are in desperately short supply here -- remember that this is an island -- so the high school athletic field is used by middle school football, and by the local Parks District's youth soccer and lacrosse programs, so it's not like the field sits empty except on Friday nights).

OK.

Election happens; votes are counted (in Washington State this sort of bond issue requires a both a 60% super-majority *and* in our specific case a voter turnout of at least 2,456 to be valid; this of course in Washington where it's a Constitutional requirement that the State legislature fully-fund public education, but don't get me started on that...).

We had 4,370 total votes cast (55.85% of registered voters) so we made the 2,456 vote threshold easily.

Proposition 2 (the athletic field and track) failed:

APPROVED 2426 55.69%
REJECTED 1930 44.31%

Proposition 1 (demolish and construct new high school classrooms) passed:

APPROVED 2626 60.22%
REJECTED 1735 39.78%

by 0.22% which came down to nine votes.

(At this point let me interject an interesting sub-plot: the opponent's official statement in the formal voter's pamphlet contained demonstrably false "data" about the actual costs of construction; within an hour of that pamphlet having been put online I spent 45 minutes trying to figure out how the proponents came up with their figures and couldn't even get close; the editor of the local paper contacted the opponents and asked them to identify their sources and/or their methodologies, and they refused to discuss the issue. The opposing statement was accepted without any validation of any sort by the county elections division).

There were 96 "contested" ballots.

In local-election-speak, "contested" means that the signature on the ballot (this was a mail-in-only election) did not sufficiently match the signature on the voter registration card. There was no suggestion of ACORN subterfuge or anything like that.

So now, the same opponents who have so consistently opposed this measure, and who (I contend) would all be happy as clams if they had won by nine votes are going absolutely ballistic, are claiming that some sort of malfeasance in the counting of the 96 "contested" has occurred, and are threatening to demand a recount.

Which they have to pay for, so we'll see.

To my mind this is part-and-parcel of the New Selfishness(tm).

These are simply people who are really doing quite well, thank you, (the demographics of this island have shifted up-scale significantly in the last decade) but who do not current have kids, will not have kids, and who could care less about the kids who are growing up on this island.

Their entire involvement with the local school district is the frustration they feel when they're held up behind a school bus.

Many, many years ago -- about the time I ran for school board -- there was a saying in popular use:

"It takes an entire village to raise one child."

Today we seem to have devolved to a rather different sentiment:

"You going to raise one child? Don't look at me."

The simple fact is that we all need children, and even if we've raised our own, we need to support those kids who are growing up right now.

That's what I think, anyway.

Apparently other people have different opinions.