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This Tuesday we have an opportunity to vote on the largest budget in the state: schools. Schools take in a significant majority of the state's funding sources, including property taxes, sales taxes, income taxes, fees, lottery revenue, etc. and we get a chance to vote on them.
But no one shows up.
We also get a chance to vote on the people who set these budgets, picking new members of our school board. Except that we often don't, with the same people running year after year and no one challenging them. We scream and yell and spend tens of thousands of dollars on council races that have manage budgets less than half the size of school budgets, but these school board races get no one filing to run and ... no one shows up.
We talk about how we need to move the school elections to primary day to make them more noticed, but is that really a solution? If folks can't get off their butts to vote for who educates our children, for how much we spend on that education, for how that education is provided, and for probably 50 percent or more of all state taxes they pay then what's the point?
I don't really mean this, but if they're not interested now with all that at stake simply because the election is in April, then do we want them voting at all?
I'm just frustrated that no one cares, that the polls are so quiet for these vitally important elections.
Are you gonna vote? Do you know who is running? How big the budget is? What programs are being cut, what programs are being added?
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