or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The...

Levy...

"Mom, you said the 'D' word".  Wow, this is a fun, snarky age.

A levee is a dam that keeps dangerous bodies of waters from flooding and ruining a town, a residence or injuring people.  I was trying to explain the school LEVY to several people with the LEVEE analogy that if we do nothing about the current budget problems then the situation will flood in on us like a 'dam' breaking.  Then I had to explain the difference between 'dam' and 'damn' to my son and decided that would either be the last time I used the levy/levee analogy or the last time I ever took my children with me...anywhere...ever...period...I'm not kidding.

A levy is a legal action taken to pay a tax liability.  By legal action in the school levy's case (nothing scary here) it would be a vote (simple majority) that would add a certain amount of money to property taxes for those who own their homes or property in Boise.  The assessed value of your house does not change but your tax would go up by an estimated $8 per month.  Check the Yes! For Boise Schools Website for more details.

Levy also means to wage war; a definition that dates back to feudal ages when rulers exchanged their protection, land and resources for military service.

Before I go any further, I  should mention I really wasn't sure I was going to write this.  When I write a blog post, it writes itself in my head well in advance.  To un-write it once I sit down would be unimaginable, impossible and non-productive.  I mean, nothing would happen, empty blog, zippo, nada, nunca.  So, with this post I'm stepping out on a limb and exposing a bit of an internal struggle that I wasn't going to share with anybody.  Okay, I shared it with my husband and he said, "Okay, Herman Cain."  You'll see what I mean in a minute.  It was my mom who turned me around.

Did you read or hear about the little girl in China who was run over by a truck and then hit by another car?  Neither driver stops to help her and none of the at least 15 people who pass her by did either.  They have video.  I wasn't going to dwell on this because the story doesn't end well.  It makes you think, what would I have done?

What do you mean?  What would I have done?  I know what I would have done and I should never have questioned what my community would have done either.

A few weeks ago my oldest son and I were driving to pick up child number 2 and we saw a young man in the gutter with his bike to the side of him.  Two of his friends standing over the top of him.  Others had started pulling over.  Nothing in this scene looked good so I pulled over too to see if anybody had called 911.  One of his friends told me "he was cool".  Yeah, I called 911 and his "it's cool" buddy bolted.  I stayed until the police arrived.  There's a whole lot more to this story but you get the idea.

Don't worry, I'm getting to the levy.

Last weekend, while Ada County Highway District was holding us hostage in the neighborhood, there was a flurry of police activity.  Well, it was taking too long and I REALLY needed to leave and get a cup of coffee. So, I went in one of the only directions I could and there were half a dozen cops and oh my gosh, is that SWAT team with a, what in the heck is that gun!  Back the float up.  I don't need a cup of coffee that bad, back the car up and go the other way, where ever that takes me.  Because just then up came a police officer with the biggest gun I have ever seen and I have seen some guns in the Alaskan bush.

Then the paramedics were waiting at the other end of the street and then a firetruck blazed in.  Not good.  Not good.

The next day I was getting that much longed for cup of joe and I ran into one of the other moms that had stopped to help the kid in the gutter.  We didn't know each other but we talked for a minute and I mentioned the bazooka weirdness from the day before.  The other mom said, "Yeah, some guy went nuts and they brought out the potato gun and bean bagged him.  Then they had to bring out the tazer."  Really?  Non-lethal forces to subdue him?  This lifted me like you would not believe.

Okay, I know this sounds nuts.  These two incidents sound terrible but this is why I'm supporting the levy.

This might surprise some people but I was privately on the fence about the supplemental levy for a very long time...I mean a very very long time.  It's not that I object to the $8 per month, seriously, I can give up two trips per month to the Moxie Java drive thru.  And I don't object to how the money is being spent:

What will the levy provide?

100% of revenue from the levy will be spent on:

• Maintaining low class sizes
• Preserving quality programs

No administrative costs will be paid for with levy dollars.

What I object to is the bunt.  We should be swinging for the fence.  It just feels like we're waiting for a walk or a base hit just to get us through.  Our kids are worth it and so is our community.  I feel like the legislature should be funding our schools fully and then funding our neighborhood safety programs so that there is a School Resource Officer at EVERY school to help us in the neighborhood every single day.  I feel like there should be a community center at EVERY school, that there should be a safe place for EVERY Idaho child to go to.  I feel like we should have fantastic pre-k programs for families that choose them, even if they don't QUALIFY for them.  Let's get our kids reading or reading ready earlier than ever before.  Expand dual language around the valley so that every school is opening global doors for our kids.  The Boise Schools Supplemental Levy is not enough.  Idaho kids deserve more.  Let's make them more competitive for the 21st century.

However, I am a realist and I know we need to do this for our own school district right now because nobody is coming to save us.  We cannot (should not?) expect the legislature to come to our rescue in the next session.


All the times I have passed through towns like Tensed, Lapwai, Culdesac, Bliss, Wallace, Wendell, Horseshoe Bend and even Nampa I have wondered how these towns manage to keep their schools going.  Sure, what goes on in the big city will trickle out to the smaller towns but the character of our state is defined by what goes on in all four corners and everything in between.

Education is the force that helps end the cycle of poverty.  I'm not the only one who thinks that.  UNESCO and a whole lot of other people on the internet who know better than I do.  Like Oprah says, "When we know better, we do better."  We see the poverty and know there are people in crisis that want to get their kids out.  The Levy in a very real sense is a war on THAT cycle of poverty.  We can end poverty for a lot of people if we can keep them in the school and keep the class sizes as they are now.

Our community at Whitney is a lot like some of the communities I've seen elsewhere that have deep poverty except for two striking differences, we have HOPE and we have some terrific people who inspire that hope like the staff and teachers through the school,  the PTO, scores of fantastic involved parents, a really fabulous community center and just really good, decent people who stop their cars when they see a kid in the gutter.

We stop to help our neighbor, we stop to help our neighbor's children.  We will pass the supplemental levy because we love living here and each child that comes out of our Boise School system has the potential to end the cycle.  We will pass the levy because we need to maintain healthy class sizes.  We will pass the levy because it keeps some of our biggest employers here, in Boise, paying taxes and paying payroll.

We stand at a lot of pivotal moments in our lifetime.  This just happens to be one where the levee either gets stopped at the top or the dam spills wide open.  What we need is the levy to fix the levee or else the kid in the gutter becomes so common place that you begin to ignore it.  The non-lethal potato gun is replaced by a real gun.

This is one of those moments and this is why I plan on March 13, 2012 to vote to support the Boise Schools Supplemental Levy.

Nikki Rutledge
-Whitney Parent