Mercer Island’s aging population and what it means for funding local schools

Earlier this spring, Mercer Islanders voted on two separate but interconnected propositions. One, a bond for the local school district, failed to reach the 60% margin it needed to pass by just a few percentage points; the other, an extension of a county-wide levy funding fingerprint-identification technology, passed. Even on their face, the results suggest something troubling about our priorities with respect to childhood education vs. crime-prevention (although decades of research have shown the two to be inextricably intertwined). Certainly, the bond’s failure to pass begs the question: Do Mercer Islanders value education in the same way they did when I was growing up in the 90s, when the Island drew young families like mine specifically for the quality of its schools?

Despite Forbes naming Mercer Island the second most expensive zip code in Washington based on Zillow data including median home value, 12-month average, and five-year home value appreciation, MIHS is ranked seventh in the latest US News and World Report list of the best high schools in the state. Islander Middle School, the would-be recipient of much of the funding included in the proposed bond, is ranked seventeenth out of all Washington State middle schools. Only one of our four elementary schools (Island Park) made the state’s top twenty-five.

Whether the Mercer Island School District Bond was the perfect solution to school-related problems is irrelevant. Mercer Islanders for Sustainable Spending (MISS), a group who campaigned heavily against the bond with the slogan “We Can Do Better,” has not proposed an alternative. The group’s website includes a single photo on its homepage that appears to depict a pair of grandparents with their grandchildren. The address that MISS lists for contact is a waterfront home on the South End that Redfin estimates is valued at almost $4.5 million. And perhaps herein lies the problem.

Young families can no longer afford to live here. Yes, there are exceptions, but many of the larger homes once filled with school-aged children are now occupied by the grandparents of school-aged children or other older folks with wealth tied up in their property. It seems reasonable to infer that people tend to vote in line with their perceived interests – increased security for these large, valuable homes over increased funding for schools. And not only vote, but campaign. Working parents of young children have less time and fewer resources to push for school funding than older, wealthier community members do to campaign against it.

While age-specific breakdowns of Mercer Island election results are not available, we can look at discrepancies between our results and those from other areas of King County for clues about how voter age may be affecting our own decisions. In February of this year, the City of Seattle voted to pass two separate propositions increasing funding for local schools. Census data from 2023 identified 21.0% of our population as 65 and over compared with only 12.8% of Seattle’s. For more context, consider that our percentage of elderly community members is more than double that in Sammamish (8.9%), nearly twice that in Redmond (10.8%), and much higher than in both Bellevue (14.5%) and Kirkland (14.2%). Discrepancies have only gotten more dramatic.

The earliest available Mercer Island census data dating from 2000 counted 18.7% of the population as 65 and older, while percentages of residents 65 and older in neighboring cities have stayed mostly consistent or decreased (for example, that same year, 11.2% of residents of both Redmond and Sammamish were 65 and older). Our community is aging, and we need to consider how this impacts our children.

The bond’s failure to pass may be a bellwether for a larger dilemma facing the Island’s aging population. I do not mean to lump all Mercer Islanders ages 65-plus together. Many older community members did vote for the bond and otherwise provide meaningful support to our local schools. However, the same older folks who voted against the bond without generating solutions for the pressures facing our local schools might consider; is it truly in their or anyone’s interest if this area becomes increasingly uninhabitable for everyone but the elderly? What will Mercer Island look like if the number of children and young families continues to dwindle? Is that a place where anyone, including older islanders, would like to live?

Perhaps, the question of funding our local schools should not be put to a bond at all. Rather, it may be time for the city to consider revenue-generating alternatives — for example, a social good property tax based on house square footage — that do not leave the school-funding issue in the hands of an aging electorate.

Kate Blumstein, Mercer Island