Letter | Vote No on school bond
Published 12:30 pm Thursday, March 29, 2012
The great majority of us on Mercer Island support education enthusiastically and appreciate the job done by the School Board and all associated with the MI School System. But the current situation has me feeling manipulated. There is a strident chorus telling voters – The sky is falling! Our MI school buildings are failing! They are antiquated, outdated, over crowded. Our students are at risk! But we, the school experts, have all the answers and just need your vote for our carte blanche School Bond Proposal.
WHOA , WE VOTERS ARE BEING STAMPEDED, guilt-whipped with our usual, all out support for schools. We have the School Board, as well as certain of the School District’s teaching, administrative and PTA staffs, the 21st Century Facilities Committee (which investigated the extent of the schools’ drastic shortcomings) and the Committee for Mercer Island Public Schools (reportedly, “the body that campaigns for the Bond proposal”) lined up in a full court press. They are flooding our newspaper, the Patch and the city streets with unrelenting demands for passage of the School Board’s (nearly) $200 million School Bond Proposal. It is a no-arguments demand for up-front voter financing for a ten year wish-list of School District building projects.
Voters have no choice on any lesser or one-step-at-a-time option. There is no re-do if this thing passes. We will tear down and rebuild three elementary schools and the middle school, acquire land for an unknown purpose (perhaps to trade as the new hush-hush, high-rise City Hall site) and sundry other lesser projects at the High School and the Mary Wayte Pool. This is over-kill to address our existing school challenges. Further…alarming language in General Obligation Bond Resolution 592 itself (read it online) allows the School Board to determine that the bond’s proceeds can be applied to capital projects other than the ones presented.
Parents of MI students thinking about supporting the Bond Proposal should ask where the students from each school to be razed and rebuilt on site are going to go, since construction of a new school facility beforehand has been rejected. Won’t this cause the displacement of entire student bodies each time one of the four schools is torn down and rebuilt? There will be serious construction disruption for MI elementary and middle school kids for the next several years. And, after spending nearly $200M on bricks and mortar, how much appetite will MI voters have for spending more on improved programs, curricula, or any other school levy or bond for the foreseeable future? Do I have to say it – Vote NO on this Bond.
L. A. Warriner
