Wednesday, November 4, 2009

It’s the day after elections and the Ohio voters always amaze me. In our school district we had a levy up for a new high school. If the residents passed the levy the tax payers would have had to pay half of the $25 million cost, with the State of Ohio contributing the other $12.5 million. The levy committee was selling it to the community as a 50% off sale. Not a bad deal. The voters reject the offer by a 56% to 44% margin.
Let’s take a look at what the people did vote for. By a 54% to 46 % margin the residents of Ohio voted to allow casinos and all forms of gambling. Now I enjoy going to the casinos once in a while but I also vote for all the school levies as they come up. The people in our communities have made their choice. They would rather lose their money at the casinos than to invest in student education.

4 comments:

  1. I will have to say that the whole Ohio casino thing was a hot topic up here in Michigan. People are concerned that they may loose the $$$'s if this went through. It is remarkable that voters would turn their backs on education like that.
    Michigan's education system has been hit hard with about a $290ish reduction per pupil which equates to higher class sizes and major reductions in staff to already add to the unemployment situation.
    I hope the voters who went for casinos instead of education had enough insight to completely understand what this will do to education.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This story is really dripping with irony. Essentially what you're saying is, Ohio voters see education as more of a gamble than casinos!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi,

    Here in Iowa, we too are looking for casinos to solve all our problems. My fellow citizens just voted down a bond issue to replace an asbestos riddent 1929 school building!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Here in Tucson, Arizona our school district elections had mixed results. TUSD, the largest district in the county, had both an override and bond proposition get soundly defeated (these both would have been a tax increase as they were new items). This district has had issues getting voters to approve funds over the years.

    Several other districts had propositions to continue overrides (no new taxes, just keep the status quo) either fail or barely pass in spite of a history of strong public support for bonds and overrides in the past. In fact, one district's override, which went to teacher salaries, currently is passing by 26 votes, with a few dozen ballots to be verified and counted. Two districts did pass their propositions with strong support.

    And this comes on the heels of some major cuts to schools from the state this year, and threats of more to come.

    ReplyDelete

Followers