Early results from Tuesday, February 9’s special election were made available on the King County Elections website at precisely 8:15 p.m. The quick upshot: school levies are passing but the officials and employees of the King County Library System have a long night (and possibly long week) ahead waiting for a definitive result. The Elections Office will post updated results for the rest of the week each day at 4:30 p.m.
On Balance, Schools Are Given a Hearty Vote of Support
As of this latest release, the Seattle School District’s two levies are passing with as impressive a margin as has been seen in recent years – 71 percent approval. School levies in Bellevue, Mercer Island, Vashon Island, Riverview, Issaquah, Snoqualmie Valley, Lake Washington, Fife, Northshore, and Shoreline School Districts also appear headed comfortably toward passage.
Measures in Enumclaw, Tukwila, and Kent are also passing but by much narrower margins.
Although many King County residents are still feeling the pinch of hard economic times, approving these measures are smart decisions for families who care about the public schools in a time when the state government may once again push K-12 education lower on their list of priorities. Their passage, however, should not be considered a mandate for business as usual in an educational system that produces students who do not compete well in the global market for jobs and do not fare well in most objective comparisons with their counterparts emerging from parochial and private schools.
Do We Love Our Libraries? It’s Too Close to Call
King County Rural Library District, 50.51% yes, 49.9% no with 182,002 ballots counted.
After the passage of Tim Eyman’s Initiative 747 that capped property tax levies at one percent growth per year, the King County Library System asked voters to approve raising the lid. That lid lift expires this year and the ballot proposition would implement a new lid-lift to avoid massive cutbacks should levies be forced to revert to I-747 mandated levels.
Libraries provide a valuable service, one that KCLS officials are very certain they will not be capable of offering if the levy does not pass. Although the system is widely disparaged as little more than a hostel for vagrants or a shrine to the antiquated technology of paper books, allowing people of all ages and economic strata a place to access literature, perform research, and access Al Gore’s vital pipeline of digital information is one of the ways the our system provides avenues for those on the bottom to work their way up.
Comments
"and access Al Gore’s vital pipeline of digital information"
Riiiiight. Let me share my pet name for Gore - 'the other reason Bush won'.
The reference to Al Gore was tongue-in-cheek I'm sure, but too many people are not sharp enough to figure that out. Keep it up and he will go down in the history books as inventer of the internet. The article could have used some proof reading as well.
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