Vote yes on Proposition 1
I hope that you are all aware that the Feb. 9 election ballot contains the important Proposition 1 that will restore the King County Library System’s property tax levy rate.
Why is this important and what does it accomplish? This levy is not a bond and is not for buildings, but is for services and the people that provide them.
KCLS is the third largest library system in the United States and each year, the demand for services increases. These include items to be checked out, programs for children and teens, computers for use in the library and even classes for the unemployed to help them write a resumes and look for a job. This levy will allow the system to preserve these services. (Note: They have already cut $1.9 million out of the budget.)
What will this cost you? This one-year levy lid lift will be collected in 2011 and will cost you an additional 8 cents on each $1,000 of the assessed value of your home. That increase amounts to $24 on a $300,000 home or $32 on a $400,000 home. Have you priced a book lately? That is less than the cost of one hard-backed book.
Libraries are an essential part of our neighborhood, and if you haven’t visited one in a while, I invite you to stop in and look around to see what wonderful things take place every day.
I strongly urge you to vote yes on Proposition 1. Learn more at www.kcls.org/prop1.
Penny Humphrey
President, Friends of the North Bend Library
Tech levy funds innovation, more effective teaching
It’s time for our community to renew our local four-year school levies. Your ballot contains two school levy propositions. The maintenance and operations levy provides about 20 percent of our district’s general funding. State and federal dollars provide about 75 percent of the actual cost of running our schools; districts must raise the rest.
Second is the technology levy. The Jimmy Carter-era school-funding formula used by the state provides no money to equip schools with modern technology or to train teachers in its use. Sure, state officials have plans to fix this — starting in 2018. For now, school districts must fund technology themselves, via local levies.
We approved our first technology levy here four years ago. It was a successful first step — replacing our 1998-vintage, hand-me-down computers, putting projectors and document cameras in most classrooms, and providing basic training for many teachers. But we still have a long way to go — both to keep up with ever-changing technology, and to catch up to neighboring school districts, many of which have had technology levies for more than a decade.
Renewing the levy will extend and update classroom technology for another four years: mobile computer labs with laptops, a full rollout of the successful “smart whiteboard” pilot program, interactive “student voting” devices, wireless networks and more.
It also raises the bar for teachers — by providing ongoing training every year, incentives for maintaining classroom-tech proficiency and more tech-support resources. One innovative program provides funding to embed a few of our most tech-savvy teachers as mentors, so all of our classrooms can benefit. This isn’t just Microsoft Word training — this is changing how teachers teach, to reach kids more effectively.
A yes vote on the technology levy is a smart investment in keeping our schools and teachers competitive and innovative — with a big payoff in better-educated kids, better prepared for 21st century life. Please join me in voting yes to renew both school levies.
Jim Reitz
North Bend
Filed Under Local News