Again?

Our school district is in the middle of $0.165 billion worth of construction work--which the voters approved in 2017 by an overwhelming margin. I had a hard time understanding why it passed on the first try, and finally concluded that it came down to Property Values.

Now they are back asking for a combination levy renewal and increase, for operating expenses. They have been obscuring the hard numbers, but that's okay, I can make an estimate from the few numbers that they did give. My estimate comes out at an increase of $0.168 billion dollars over the previous levies--this is over the ten-year period they are asking for. Their brochure suggests it might be more like $0.120 billion dollars, but it's hard to put things in context when they are hiding the baseline.

Now that I've found the actual text of the ballot question, it looks even worse. They are proposing to MORE THAN DOUBLE the existing levies.  Also, to index it to inflation. And, it is based on a per-student rate, so if enrollment increases, then so does the amount that they collect.

In the brochure, on page 3, there's a graph that is worth looking at. Just recently I read several of Edward Tufte's very interesting books on elegant graphical displays of information. So when I look at that graph, what I see is how elegantly it both shows and obscures the doubled levy request. At first glance, it looks like two streams merging and continuing together with the same total quantity, because the top and bottom heights don't change, but on the right side of the graph, the middle is filled in, with the increase in shaded area representing the 108% increase in levy.

One fact to know about this school district is that about 1 in 10 students come from outside the district, through open enrollment. They've closed this in the lower grades, for lack of space, so the proportion in the higher grades is even higher. It is also apparent from the things that they brag about in their media, and the things that they don't, that they are heavy on reputation and impressive-sounding activities, but not as good as they ought to be on academic quality.

In 2017 there were highly-coordinated efforts to get the bond request passed. In 2019, I am seeing more of the same; we have received multiple mailings.

The local newspaper was uncritically supportive of the 2017 proposal, something that I did not forget when the paper was asking for voluntary subscriptions. I was just about to donate, but then I changed my mind when I remembered their coverage of this issue. These past few weeks, the paper seems to have gone inactive. I can't say it's a clear case of cause and effect, but I suspect there's a connection.