Just a reminder that today, Tuesday, April 14, 2009, you have an opportunity to vote. Local school districts 91 (Idaho Falls) and 93 (Ammon/Bonneville) are holding their supplemental levy elections today.
If your district’s levy passes, your property taxes, more or less, will pretty much remain the same. If the levy fails, you will see a reduction in your property taxes.
For example, and based on information provided by SD.93’s link (provided below), if you own a house within the boundaries of SD.93 and it is valued at $250,000 you could reduce your property taxes by $1,362 annually by voting NO. So, think about it before you vote today.
Math: $250,000.00 assessed home value
x 0.005448 current tax levy rate
$1,362.00 annual property taxes if levy passes
I have attached a link for each district’s talking points concerning the proposed supplemental levies:
SD.91 – http://www.d91.k12.id.us/Announce/Levy.pdf
SD.93 – http://www3.d93.k12.id.us/district/files/6FBC6F17FDEC47B1A730F210D74CC567.pdf and http://www3.d93.k12.id.us/district/files/FCCCD56CF7A3436EB8B9E5DC8A22454C.pdf
Make sure you get out and exercise your constitutional right – VOTE!
Voting will take place from 12 Noon to 8PM at each school throughout the districts of 91 & 93.
Popularity: 8%
Related posts:
- Update: School District 93 no longer considering a 4-day school week, instead plans to explore other budget and program cuts. Meetings scheduled for next week.
- VOTE “NO” On The New School Bond! INSTEAD, Merge The Two Local School Districts Into One!!!
- Meetings planned to discuss Idaho Falls School District 91 bond proposal
- Bonneville School District 93 is considering a four-day school week. What are your thoughts?
- Meet Alex Creek – Candidate for Idaho Falls City Council, seat 4
It WAS all he had to say about it!
:@:)
Loading ...
{ 26 comments… read them below or add one }
I’ll be voting NO!
If the taxpayers are expected to cut back and adjust their family budgets these days, then you better believe the local school districts should too.
Furthermore, if the school districts do not choose to participate in consolidated elections and continue to hold stealth elections such as this – then I will continue to be a NO vote, no matter how much it hurts!
Based on The Gadsden’s comments, I just had another thought.
Both school districts, 91 & 93, will hold another set of elections just next month on May 19 for the election of school board members. Why couldn’t they save the taxpayers and themselves the cost of this election and hold the supplemental levy vote over for May 19th?
Why must we have two seperate elections for the exact same entities within a month apart?
If the districts need money, at the least consolidate your own elections.
That’s an excellent point, Joe!
Why would they have two elections only one month apart? Maybe, they’re afraid they’ll have a larger turnout, and their concerned for the trustee positions and the possibility of loosing control of the board.
No more YES men and women for the teacher’s union to push around.
That’s why I say the school districts love these “stealth elections.”
It is truly brilliant on their part, and allows them to maintain control. Not so great for the taxpayer and voting public.
Please vote, and please vote YES! It doesn’t matter where your politics are at, the schools need to be funded! Don’t let your anger dictate the future of public education!
As someone who has worked in a High School I can easily vote NO – I know how much waste happens. If schools planed ahead and were just a little more thoughtful they could do more with less.
I went to high school not too long ago, I know the quality of a vast majority of those employed in the local districts, I’ll be voting NO. Cut back the teachers’ guaranteed wages, and start up an incentive system. Make them prove that they’re worth their salt.
Oh, and I have two youngins in elementary school. The teachers are lazy to the point that the children lead the parent / teacher conferences. WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?
I want to speak with the teacher about how my child is performing in class (behavior, attention, etc.), I don’t want my kids to have to show me exactly what they already show me on a nightly basis just because you want to make sure that I know you’re making them do things some of the time! Are ya’ll really that god damn stupid?
Marcus – how, then, should we measure how teachers are doing. What measurable performance factors should we use to offer the incentives?
You know Jeremy, I think class testing has major flaws, but that would be just about the only way. If you can move a class to learn, keep the kids going and their wheels turning, test scores really will reveal how well you are doing your job.
Teachers should be tested on the curriculum that they’re pushing as well. I can’t even count on my hands the number of teachers that had no idea what they were doing when I was attending Skyline High School. There are exceptions though, a couple of them really stood out.
And, Jeremy, just exactly how much money is ENOUGH for public schools?
Marcus – The concept of testing to determine teacher effectiveness has been thoroughly disproven. Testing, at least objective testing, ignores the fact that teaching is more than just relaying information to students. Rather, teachers should instruct students on how to think, how to use their capacity for critical reason and form ideas about the world. Yes, information is a key part of that. But a 100-question test is such a poor measure of how teachers are doing.
Rather, we should get to know our teachers, No, teachers should NOT be paid to prepare their students for some meaningless test. That would marginalize the importance of education and skirt the need for real and deep education.
Look at it this way – teachers get paid something like $30,000 a year, which is a very livable wage, but hardly lucrative. Nobody is going to get wealthy being a teacher. So, their wage isn’t really a big deal, is it? what’s important is that administration and parents work to get to know teachers and schools should court teachers with a passion for their subjects and work hard to keep them engaged. Teachers don’t get into the job for the money, they do it because they love the concept of education. Myself, I plan on obtaining my Master’s as soon as possible once I enter the education system, for as much as I love teaching, I also like expensive vacations, and college professors make a hell of a lot more than High School level teachers.
Hallistone – I don’t know, I’m not an administrator and never will be. I know that education costs exactly as much as education costs, and we sitting here on the internet refusing to shell out money (remember, it’s just money) to pay teachers isn’t going to fix the problem of education. Neither is privatizing. If you don’t like how the money is being spent, stop complaining, take to the State Board and remove the administration. Get people in there who will better spend your tax dollars. Don’t harm students because you don’t like what the fat cats are doing with the money.
Now, I didn’t say 100 question fill in the bubble tests — those are certainly not effective.
I’m talking a short, sweet survey that takes child and parent input into consideration, and a short questionnaire of material covered for that week / month / whatever. It wouldn’t take more than 5 minutes of class time to pass out and complete, and the scores would be dumped in a database and saved until some pre-defined review period.
My worry is that the same group of kids that check off all of the ridiculous answers (I smoke weed, meth, have sex weekly, etc.) on the census information requests will negatively impact a good teacher’s wage. However, like I said, in most cases if you are effective and your kids like to be in your class and take your instruction well as a result you won’t run into many of those problems.
I think teaching should be judged on how well they do their job just like any other job, or any other part of life.
I think that there are a lot of facets to judging a teacher’s performance, and there would have to be people qualified to do that. Also, it would take time for a teacher to build a performance record, so it wouldn’t happen overnight. Don’t you remember teachers that you loved (or not so much)? You probably aren’t the only one with those same memories about the same teacher.
I can’t believe that people surrounding teachers and their students on a daily basis don’t have some idea of their performance. Obviously, if the teachers are competing against each other, you couldn’t trust that sort of input, so they would need to be judged solely on their own merit.
And no, I don’t know how to do that, that’s why it’s not my job
Just got my no vote in for D91.
It looks like both school levies past last night. 93 past with 76% approval and 91 with 86% approval.
=/
YAY!
I voted last night and I was surprised by several things. The school had scheduled a “Family Fun Night” at the school the same evening. I think it was to make sure that all of the parents of school children came to vote. Naturally those with children in school are more likely to vote yes. Then the school didn’t open the other outside doors on the building which they have always done for voting in the past. Whether you were coming to vote or for their fun night, everyone had to come in through one door. So while I was in line to vote there were kids running all around me screaming and yelling. The line for voting was right in the middle of their carnival. Then I got my ballot, and it wasn’t even a secret ballot. It was a piece of paper that I was supposed to mark and fold over. Problem was, you could see which box was checked right through the folded paper. If this wasn’t a fraudulent election it was pretty close in my opinion.
This wasn’t a major election vote, what are you trying to hide? It was a simple yes or no vote for the aformentioned levies. The people have spoken regardless of the outcome you hoped for.
not everything is a secret ploy.
heaven forbid the school have a family reading night!
I didn’t say I was trying to hide anything. I’m saying that proper election protocol wasn’t followed, regardless of what result you take it upon yourself to assume that I was hoping for. What’s that got to do with anything?
How should it have been handled in your opinion? Your ballot was put in a locked box wasn’t it, who cares if you could see through the ballot?
I quit posting here for a while. Now I remember why. Find someone else to argue with.
You are right disgruntled voter. When I voted I talked with many people who were there who thought the same as you too. On every other election day the school takes great pains to make sure voters don’t mix with students. Last night they had a parent-student party right in the middle of a polling booth with no way around it. And I had to hand my ballot to a guy who LOOKED AT IT FIRST before putting it in the lockbox. There are few enough school activity nights that I don’t think it was a coincidence their party was last night and they did things like they did. But someone will probably think I didn’t see what I saw or have some ulterior motive, right?
The event that was scheduled last night at Hawthorne wasn’t meant to be in April. Due to a sudden death in the school’s staff the reading party had to be changed. If I remember correctly the date was changed the 1st week in March and the district didn’t announce the levy election date till March 11 or so. Just be glad kids were reading with their parents and glad that you got to go cast your ballot.