Levy YES vote is vital

When the legislature failed in its responsibilities -- and promises -- to adequately fund education this year, it threw the ball back in the court of local taxpayers to make up for its deficiencies.

Historically, voters in the Mountain Home School District have tended to support education, understanding that schools are more than just teaching reading, writing and arithmetic. We hope that support continues by approving Thursday's supplemental levy request.

The district did not wind up in this financial crisis through mismanagement. It has always been fiscally conservative and has been responsibly managed over the last 20 years. It does not have the kind of "pad" some districts in Idaho have, because it hasn't asked for more money than was needed. That fiscal responsibility left it more vulnerable than some districts to the legislature's failings.

The focus of both the administration and the teachers has always been on providing a quality education for our children. Now, due to conditions beyond its control, the district is facing a financial crisis that seriously threatens that effort to give students a quality experience as it trains them for future success in the real world.

The impact of a failure to pass this levy would be catastrophic.

Students would lose just about everything that keeps them interested in school -- the special enrichment classes and the extracurricular activities that are so much a part of a quality school experience. Programs, such as the girls softball team that have made this community so proud, would be dismantled. It would take years to rebuild those programs from scratch once the financial crisis ends.

Think back to your own high school experience and try and imagine what it would be like if the only thing you had were the classes that led directly to graduation, if nothing else was available to make school fun and engaging. We simply cannot take all these opportunities away from our kids. To do so would be cruel and irresponsible.

There are huge economic impacts associated with this levy request. If it fails, the local economy will take an almost immediate $3 million hit. If it passes, although taxpayers will pony up for it out of their own pockets next year, at least most of that money will recirculate within the local economy, helping keep businesses open and jobs alive. Failure would seriously hurt efforts to bring new business and industry -- and the much needed F-35 squadrons -- to the community.

Furthermore, it simply is not fair to throw this crisis on the backs of the teachers, who already will face a 4 percent cut in salary even if the levy passes.

Rejecting this levy, and therefore our responsibility as citizens, is to ask the teachers to take an 8.5 percent cut in salary, increased class sizes (filled with students whose motivations to stay in school would be low) and fewer resources to help them teach, in order to have the right to instruct and mold our children. They shouldn't have to bear the sole burden for educating our children. It must be shared by all of us.

Some teachers would leave, looking for work elsewhere. A large number of the more experienced and quality teachers in the district would simply retire, since their retirement benefits would exceed what would be left of their paychecks. It would take a long time for the district to recover from the loss of quality experience.

No one likes higher taxes. But this is literally an investment in the future of our children that voters are being asked to make and it is our responsibility as citizens to answer this difficult call by voting YES on Thursday's levy vote.

-- Kelly Everitt