The Political Desk: Summer Rush Edition

 So, the King County Voters Pamphlet showed up a few days ago, but I chose to wait to post only because I tend to make my comments based on what I actually can vote on, and only rarely (though occasionally) wander out into other jurisdictions. 

The 2023 elections are already being overshadowed by the 2024 elections in this state. That's not just because of the Presidential Election is next year (though Washington State is reliably blue), but because the Governor of the past 12 years is not running for re-election. As a result, a leading contenders on the Dem side are the current state's Attorney General and Commissioner of Public Lands. And as a result of THAT other candidates are leaving THEIR jobs and running for THOSE positions. In other words, it is like entire elected state government is a big Boggle Cube and we've hit it with a hammer. But that's not what I need to talk about.

Similarly, the City of Seattle is currently having a big thing this year in that they have 7 open seats, and so we have a raft (45 candidates) of newcomers vying for their positions. But I don't vote in Seattle's city elections, so while I will point you in the direction of people who DO talk about it, I have no further advice.

And FURTHERMORE, there are a number of seats on the King County Council that are up, but they are in even-numbered districts, and Grubb Street is an odd-numbered district, so, again, there is no election for us.

And this is why I DON'T like the idea of moving major elections to even-numbered years. From a marketing side, I want people to go vote. Without big-ticket elections, everyone else gets a short shrift. The biggest matchups I'm seeing this cycle are things like Port Authority. A lot of school board stuff, and council seats at the micro-local level. These are the solid, working, effective positions - not particularly glitzy, but really important. They just don't have the glitz.

Let's make matters even worse. The day for the Primaries is 1 August. So a lot of people will not worry about it because "it's next month" and then get surprised when election day goes zipping past them at high velocity.

So the bad news is that not of lot of people are paying attention here. The good news, such as it is, is that YOUR vote, should you vote, is worth just a tiny bit more than otherwise. So, you know, go vote. It doesn't even cost you a stamp. Fill it out and mail it back, or drop it off in a plethora of election drop boxes scattered around the county. That simple.

But the smallness of this election creates one further difficulty for the small-time elections. We DON'T have a lot of info on the candidates on this level. We have their Statements in the Voters' Pamphlet, and maybe see some yard signs and MAYBE read something about them in the hyper-local media. So the chances of people running under false flags or not being entirely honest with the voters is high. A few elections back we had someone running for Hospital Board who attended the 6 Jan protests (but not, so far as we know, the riot that followed).. And we had a candidate for School Board that sounded good in the Voters' pamphlet until he chose to reveal the horrors of CRT in the local newspaper. 

So let's keep our eyes open around here. Check endorsements (though candidates can be untruthful about those as well). See who is fronting the money (The Chamber of Commerce, while not an alarm, is a red flag). Take things with a hunk of salt.

Here are some other people's recommendations. The Seattle Times trends further right that most of its readership, is much more pro-business, and just fired a new member of its editorial board for tweeting that Hitler was not THAT bad a guy. The Stranger is a little to the left of its readership, and disappointed that retiring socialist Kwana Shawant is not running for every position. Neither one gets this far south. Here is the Progressive Voters' Guide for the City of Kent. Here are endorsements from Crosscut, which again concentrates on the big urban centers. The Capitol Hill Blog asks a lot of questions to the candidates for District 3 here. Here is covereage from the West Seattle Blog.  Here are endorsements from the Seattle Transit Blog which worries about, well, Seattle transit.  Here and here a couple from the various Democrats. And from the Republicans I have ... nothing. The one I checked said they were putting up a new web site Real Soon Now. 

So what about my recommendations. Well, my own ballot arrived, and it is ... scant. Four items only. See, I told you.

COUNTY

King County Preposition No. 1 Veterans, Seniors and Human Services Levy. This is the second renewal of a levy that has already done well in previous elections and has proved effective. No one showed up to argue against it in the Voter's Pamphlet - APPROVED.

PORT OF SEATTLE

Port of Seattle Commissioner Position No. 5, There's always a good scandal at the Port, but of late its challenges have been mostly the result of their own success. The airport is too crowded. Traffic to the airport is a mess. The cruise ships dump thousands of tourists (and their vacation money) at Pike Place Market. Fred Felleman is the man on the scene, has a good environmental record, and wants to offload air freight to nearby JBLM to the south until they finally build a new airport. Yeah, re-elect FRED FELLEMAN

CITY

City of Kent Council Position No. 3. From the Voter's Guide, it seems like requirement for this position is children in the Kent Schools and at least one ancestor in Saar Pioneer Cemetery. All candidates want to make a better, safer, more unified Kent. All good things. I'm going with endorsements on this one and voting for JOHN BOYD.

SCHOOL

Kent School District No. 415 District No. 415, Director District No. 3. Again, everyone looks good on the Voters' Guide. No red flags or buzz words. Challenger Stephanie Lawson looks good, but incumbent Leslie Kae Hamada has not blown things up, which in these days is a definite plus. For this round I'm going to go with LESLIE KAE HAMADA

That is it for me. The rest of yinz are on your own.   

More later, 

The Political Desk: Superintendent of Public Instruction

Oh my god. Nine candidates for this office, and the Voter's Pamphlet doesn't even give me a clue about their political leanings. I am doomed.

All right, time to be ugly about it. If your voter's write-up does not include a working web site, just see yourself out the door. I am sure that you have very sound ideas, but this is 2016, and you need to come to class prepared. I am sorry, Mr. Blair, Ms. Prouty, and Mr. Runte.

That gets it down to a manageable size. Let me say on behalf of all the candidates that education is important, bipartisanship is vital and the children are our future. Then let's see what they're saying after we cut all that away.

Chris Reykdal promotes equal funding for schools, reducing standardized testing, and more career education programs. Former state legislator. Lots of endorsements, mostly from the Democrat side of the fence. First Superintendent in 30 years to have kids in the system (which is true, but on a technicality).

Ron Higgins is all about the Freedom, and making kids into good citizens for our Constitutional Republic. Supports homeschooling and charter schools, and notes we should treat boys as boys and girls as girls. Recycles. Wants you to get off his lawn. Oddly, no endorsements on his web site.

Robin Fleming comes in from a strong health background, has some modest endorsements on her site, Running against the politicians running for office - of which there are few. Actually, one - Mr. Reykdal. Claims she is the only candidate that with the qualification and experience to improve the life opportunities of the state's children. Not sure she is the only one on that score.

Erin Jones is the choice of the Stranger and the Times, and it always makes me nervous when these guys agree - they're either onto something or taking something. But Ms. Jones also has a long list of other educators, just about every Democrat that Mr. Reykdal missed (and some overlaps) and even a couple smart Republicans. A teacher herself whose kids just graduated, she has some mean chops.

KumRoon (Mr. Mak) Maksirisombat states the problems well, but is lacking on specifics. His site is a bit light on endorsements as well.

David Spring cannot be faulted for not having a plan, and may be the most sweeping of all the candidates. Better teacher pay! Reduced class size! Two years of free college! Homes for homeless children! How to pay for it? Close tag loopholes for corporate welfare! Addresses the other ideas of the candidates but declares they do not go far enough. I didn't expect an old-school rhetorical bomb-thrower in this race. Author of the book Weapons of Mass Deception. No endorsements I found, but you know, I can't say he's wrong. He should be running for Governor on this platform, and he wouldn't be the craziest candidate to do so. Not by a long shot.

And as much as I would like to see Mr. Spring role up to the state house with a tank to demand the legislature pony up the funds to accurately pay for quality education, I lean to both Mr. Reykdal and Ms. Jones. And if faced with the aforementioned tank would give the nod to Erin Jones, and want to know more. Let's go with her.

More later,

Political Desk Initiative I-1351

Here's the entry for I-1351 as it appears on the ballot:

This measure would direct the legislature to allocate funds to reduce class sizes and increase staffing support for students in all K-12 grades, with additional class-size reductions and staffing increases in high-poverty schools.

Sounds pretty straightforward, right? You like schools, I like schools. We all like schools. And as a now-registered old person, I think kids are dumb enough already, and I really don't want to slide the bar any further in the stupid direction. 

But, this will cost. There's no two ways about it. If you reduce the size of the classes you have to have more teachers (third-path option - half-day school, but nobody seems to want to bite on that one, and you STILL have to pay the teachers). And you need more places to teach. Yeah, its a toughie - just how much do YOU like educated kids?

Of course, our state legislature doesn't look particularly good in all this. They are already in contempt of court (state supreme variety) for not delivering on promised K-12 education, so they have not shown a lot of gumption in the first place. Worse yet, while the state pleads poverty for educating its kids, last term they had no problem finding 9 Billion in cuts and tax breaks to keep Boeing from shipping the assembly of a new plane out of state (the plane-maker thanked the state legislature, took the money, then shipped out about 2000+ engineering jobs, making the legiscritters looks like prize bumpkins). So yeah, left to their own devices, Olympia probably ain't gonna deliver without a lot of people making serious growling noises behind them. This is a serious growling noise.

So I say YES on this one, but go in with your eyes wide open. This is a good thing, but one that will come with a price tag. One which we really should be paying.

More later, 

Strike

So the Kent School District teachers have been on strike for the past two weeks. This has had its most notable affect on Grubbstreet only in that we haven't heard school bells in the morning (while not in Kent proper (yet), we are part of the Kent School District, and our property backs on an KSD elementary school, and we contribute to the millage for support thereof.).

The strike has been first and foremost about class size (number of meetings and salaries are secondary issues, but it is class size that is apparently sticking in everyone's craw at the moment). The average size of an elementary school class is 33 kids, mandated by a previous contract. That number swells up to 45 students in high school, where no such cap exists.

That's a lot of kids to a classroom, so I can see the teachers pushing for reduced headcount. The Kent School District has been less accommodating, such that they've gone to court to fine the teachers heavily for walking out. Then they stopped negotiating. Then they started negotiating, but declared that school will reopen, no matter what, on Tuesday. No pressure, mind you.

Oh, and the teachers brought to the table a proposal costing less than what the school district was demanding of it. And the school district rejected it. I think we're just moved into the realm of union-busting here.

You'd think the parents, whose kids are being deprived of an education, and in addition are around the house for an additional two weeks, would be on the school board's side. Some are, but it seems like the bulk of them are supporting the teachers, to the point of movements to toss out the school board. Strange times indeed.

Now most of my data comes from the Seattle Times which is interesting in that it is providing both sides of the issue in an unusual way. When I read the reporting, I would say that it is pro-teachers (pointing out stuff like the fact that Kent SD has a $21 million budget right now). But the editorials are rock-solid pro-management - the teachers should quit all this silliness and get back to the cattle pens to instruct their kids. If they have to buy a megaphone, its coming out of their own pockets.

Now I have a modest proposal. Well, not a Modest Proposal because that would note that we have a surplus of students so we should start building additional schools out of them. Instead, here's this - no more development in Kent until we can provide the infrastructure to support that development. Seriously. We don't build another house in the area until we have schools that can service the additional population.

Kent has been a sprawling, expanding exurb, and dealing with that growth has been a major challenge to its elected officials. And to be honest, they haven't done too shabby a job, revitalizing their downtown and paying attention to growth and environmental issues. But the simple fact is that we have teachers working with huge classes and every school has a outpost of "temporary classrooms" that have become permanent. We're at the limits, so we need to stop taking more people in.

(And yeah, I could say "no more kids", but that's just unfair to prevent people from living somewhere just because they have children, so I'm willing to bite the bullet on behalf of the non-marrieds and childless couples and ban everybody).

It would solve a problem, and allow the school board to spend the money they're saving on bringing up the quality of the local education (already high, so thanks to both sides on this - I like smart kids). OR the school district could get serious about the talks and stop jerking the teachers, parents, and kids around to get the show back on the road and the kids back in school.

I offer this simply as a choice. No pressure.

More later,

Update: Strike settled as of Monday AM. Class size reduced for lower grades (good), but still uncapped for high school (good luck, kids!). Reduced meetings to 8/month and modest (very) pay raises. Teachers saw a lot of support from the community in all this despite the inconvenience for their kids. Still think we need to consider school capacity as a basic infrastructure concern for new development, but then, that's just me.