***UPDATED AT THE BOTTOM WITH RESULTS***
Here we are, the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November, and my first election day back in America. I spent about two hours last night (1am to 3am) wishing my body would get right with itself so I could go back to sleep in my bed, not on the bathroom floor, and have been curled up under the heating pad and/or the cat for most of the day. It’s a nice hearkening back to my sans-job days, but I do enjoy my paycheck and I hate being sick, especially when my health insurance doesn’t kick in until December. Watching Sicko probably didn’t help, though expect a post on that later.
Almost 100 school districts in Minnesota have levies on ballots today, and as I’m still a resident in the Osseo School District, I shoved my sick and sore self out of bed, drove over to the junior high, and voted. I’d registered and voted absentee in last year’s arguably bigger deal election, but it was nice to walk into the gym and fill in the circles with the AUTHORIZED MARKING INSTRUMENT (a black Bic pen that was missing the cap) on the wobbly table, feed the ballot into the ballot-eating machine, and get my red “I Voted” sticker. Much more involved than mailing off the ballot and hoping it gets counted, and big ups to the fact that I could scrub it at the polling place; God help us the day they start requiring you to brush your hair, or I would have been out on my ass.
These levies are a big deal. A lot of education funding in Minnesota comes from property taxes, and the levies authorize an increase to keep the schools going at the same level they’re at now. If Osseo’s levy doesn’t pass, the budget will be cut down almost 30%, over one quarter of district employees will be gone. Class size will increase across the board by 10 to 13 students; class size at my alma mater are currently around 35 students. Schools will close, including a high school, two elementary schools, and an additional site, requiring the boundaries to be redrawn and over 4,000 students to switch schools next year.
I get that people don’t like tax hikes, and I don’t think property taxes are the right way to pay for public education. I don’t know why or how the system wound up like it is, but it needs to be fixed, and not by voting against this levy. Voting “yes” to fund the levy could be seen as supporting a system that’s broken, and voting “no” may be a way to show that you want a change, but it comes at the expense of the students and teachers. Citizens have a responsibility to pay fair taxes and the government has a responsibility to use the tax money well.
End soapbox… at least for now. Next year is (as you may have heard) another pretty big election, so I might get back up here again.
UPDATE (Nov 7): The first of the three levy questions passed, meaning that the district will be able to sustain levels approximate to what it currently has. There will still be cuts, but they won’t be as drastic as they would have been if the levy had failed outright.
