Letter to Editor | Why I Support School Bond

— from Kristen Wilson —

There are so many reasons to like this school bond, including the whole list of essential repairs or improvements it will make to our inadequate facilities. If some of these problems were occurring in our own homes most of us would be saying, “We need to get this fixed!” Should we tolerate it in our schools?

I am a parent of a student and I am at the school almost every school day, so I have experienced some of the problems.

I have experienced the awful potholes that you must drive through to get to the high school parking lot.

I’ve stood at the door of the elementary school music classroom (also used for all strings classes) unable to enter the room because some classes are just too big for the small space. Once the chairs and stands are set up and students are seated with their instruments, they are packed so tightly that no one is able to move around the room, including the teacher! That makes it difficult, if not impossible, for the teacher to correct bow holds and give personal help to students. In large string classes, the students don’t even have room to move their bows across their instruments.

I’ve listened to my daughter talk about how chilly the high school classrooms are – so chilly that she wears her parka all day inside the building.

I’ve seen the disrepair of the restrooms, the toilets and sinks, and it’s not pretty.

I’ve watched for 25 years as the great Old Gym has gotten a little more shabby each year.

These are the kinds of things that will be repaired or replaced with this bond. These are not frills. They are necessary items to bring our school up to a safe and adequate space for our children. Our students and teachers are working their hearts out. And I think they deserve better.

Are there some items on this bond that you don’t personally support? Maybe so. Any of us might have put together a different list of items to include on the school bond.

But the School Board has made every effort to bring all points of view together to put together the best possible bond at this time. They invested many, many hours in multiple community meetings and surveys to discuss the options to include on the bond. Everything on the bond was carefully chosen after extensive vetting with the school staff, parents and the entire community of Orcas.

I trust the school board and administration when they say that, after all the meetings and surveys, that these items on the bond are the items that came to the fore in all that information gathering. These are the items that our community, as a whole, has said they want and need now.

That’s why I support the school bond, and I hope you vote “approved” on Proposition No. 1.