And back to taxes...
I'm going to talk about something that bothers me. That's not what I intended this blog for but it seems like I should have named it "Things that tick me off."
Monday morning I got a call telling me I should go visit Bloomfield Elementary. Apparently, the roof problems we've been hearing about for years reached a new level of trouble.
During Friday's torrential evening rains, it appears that enough water made it through the roof and into a classroom to leave about 4 inches of standing water in the floor for the weekend. Coincidentally, this is my 9-year-old daughter's math class.
Now, I understand that sometimes these things happen, but this has been an ongoing problem for several years. The maintenance men at the school spend an insane amount of their time patching holes in the roof, but that's just a temporary fix. It's been well over 20 years since the building was re roofed and it shows.
It's actually reached the point where its going to require serious construction to replace the roof and repair the underlying damage.
Twice in the past two years, the school has gone to the people to try to raise the district tax levy to accommodate for repairs of this magnitude and twice it has been handedly defeated.
I'm not here today to push for a tax, but to explain a little about funding that a lot of people don't understand.
When you look at a school districts budget, yes you see some rather hefty numbers, but nearly all of that money is specifically allocated as to how it can be used. You can't use capital improvement money to repair a roof just they they can't get into the lunch fund to pay for textbooks.
Another argument I've heard involves the school buying up surrounding property. Something that needs to be understood, is that in order for a school in the center of town to grow, they have to purchase surrounding property when it becomes available because it may never be for sale again. Bloomfield, for instance has added quite a bit of parking in some of the property they bought.
Again, though, that is not the same money that would go into repairs. It is illegal for a district to use those funds inappropriately and carries some stiff penalties.
The only other argument I've heard has been that some people don't like the current administration and won't vote for this until there are changes. Well, who you like is your own business, but don't take that out on our children.
If as a citizen of any public body, you have a problem with something or someone, go to a meeting and call and set one up to sit down and talk about your concerns.
I go to public meetings every week and rarely is there ever more than one person in attendance and more often there are none.
Like I said, I just wanted to explain some things about the funding of public body's for people who don't understand that it doesn't work like a checking account. This isn't a push for a tax. I just wanted to clarify some things that I've heard.
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The idea about a county school is interesting, but doubtfully practical here in a county with so many hills and so much dead space in between communities. It would make things like snow days complicated, too.
Places like St. Charles County though is handled differently. Since the whole community is urban, it's broken up in a different way than ours are.
I will dig into it and see what I can find out in the near future.
Advance had the same problem. When we moved here in '75, they hadn't had a successful bond issue since the elementary school was built in 1957. My husband had a conversation with a neighboring farmer and asked him why he didn't vote for improving the school. He told him that the amount they were asking for was "too much," and he didn't want them "spending money on the teacher's lounge." My husband had been in construction all his life, and he knew the costs involved - but these people who were voting the taxes down had NO IDEA how much it cost to build a school.
There was also an issue in attitude: I was amazed at the hostility directed at the school administration and the faculty.
In the early nineties, someone had the foresight to enlist key people in the community - representing several segments, including the grandparent generation - and they formed a task force which later came to be called "Kids First." This group worked to change attitudes. As a result, Advance has had three major successes since that time - building a facility to replace some TRAILERS, a new high school, and, most recently, a major $2.5 million elementary renovation (equivalent of a new school).
Of course, it didn't hurt that a very generous local farm family donated over $30,000 to the high school effort. They used that seed money to start a fund, which gathers interest through the years. There was $50,000 from the fund to contribute to the most recent effort.
Get your community involved! You have to break the cycle!