Ok so now what am I talking about, well ................... Some of you may, or may not, know that I'm the Executive Director for Facilities for the 9th largerest school distirct in the State of Washington. I'm responsible for making sure that our students have a an efficient and high quality educational environment in which to learn and to become the future leaders of our country. Sorry but I'm really serious when it come to this stuff. As an architect I really do know that ones environment has a direct impact on ones abiltiy to learn.
In most of the United States the decision whether or not to provide the funding to build and maintain appropriate educational environments is left up to the voters. Oh yes that's what democracy is all about then, isn't it. Putting funding propositions in front of the country's electorate requires years of planning and concensus building.
What you see above are the results of a failed election in which the voters said no we will not support building high quality educational environments for our own students. Interstingly enough, in our country, if the proposition would have been to build a jail, 50% would have been enough, but to build a school it requires, not 50%, but 60%. You just can't trust those school folks like you can trust those jail folks.
I guess the message is that in this state we would rather put people in jail rather than schools.
All that, isn't really that insightfull. Take a look at the following though.
What the chart above shows is that of the 44,301 ballots sent out only 15,959 were returned. So only 1/3 of the ballots were returned!! so almost 30,000 people didn't care enough about our childrens education to even return a ballot either for or against. Let us not even consider that the number of ballots sent out was only to registered voters and many of those eligible to vote don't even register.
People around the world are dying, over 3,000 amercan soldiers have died in Iraq alone, to assure the right of people to vote (or so George tells us) and decide their own destiny. The citizens of Iraq risked their lives to get a blue fingure but we americans who fbattled for them to have that right, don't don't excercise that right in our own country. Call me crazy but was it about WMD's, the war on terror, or freedom and democracy in Iraq. The story does seem to change doesn't it.
Complacency is telegraphing the demise of our county as we are more atentive to the "Super Bowl" than the education of our children.....the future of our land.
LET'S SPEND OUR DOLLARS WHERE THEY REALLY COUNT
THE PARKING LOT AT THE EMERALD QUEEN IS ALWAYS FULL NOW THAT IS MY KIND OF INVESTMENT IN THE FUTURE !!!
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