No one likes to pay more taxes, and with the increased cost of everything, it gets even more challenging. I wish the state of Idaho had a different funding model for public schools, but this is the one we are faced with, no matter which community we live in. All small communities in the state of Idaho are faced with relying on a levy to fund a portion of their school, so we shouldn’t feel victimized in Grangeville Idaho.
I grew up in a small town in rural Montana. Do I feel that I received a good education? Absolutely. How did that happen? I think back to all of the community members in my hometown who rallied together to support our school system. If you grow up in a small town, you take care of each other. For a small town to continue to thrive, we must stick together, and all help each other out for our community to be what it is today; GREAT! Take politics out of the equation; it’s about community, and we are all involved in this together!
You may not have a child who goes to a Grangeville Idaho school in our district, but your vote on the school levy does influence your community. If you moved here from another area and don’t have direct ties to the school, voting YES is still vitally important. Great hospital, dentists, and optometrists in our area that takes care of you rely on a strong school. For our medical services to be great, think about all of the physicians and staff that it takes to make our medical community great. Most of our physicians and staff have kids that go to school at 244. If we cannot provide our hospital staff with a good school education for their families, there is a good chance we could lose many of our medical community that we have all grown to love. We can’t recruit young families to move or stay here when our school is in turmoil. And when young families go, so goes a workforce for businesses, medical facilities, and volunteer organizations. Imagine living in a town where if you have an emergency and dial 911, no one responds.
The same is true for all of the small businesses. If you want to keep large corporations out of our small town, we need to nurture the small businesses. We want our businesses to thrive and continue serving Idaho County. Many of our business owners count on family-oriented businesses to operate. Without a solid school education intact, we may lose many of the small businesses that our community counts on. How can we expect to recruit and retain businesses when we can barely keep our school intact?
Our levy needs to pass, and we cannot continue to cut education for our kids. Most of these kids will stay in the area and will need to serve our community. Most of these kids will one day take care of all of us! Do we want our kids to have a bare minimum substandard education, or do we want our kids to have an enlightening education to find his or her talents/way in the world and enrich that along the way?
Vote before it’s too late!
Think back to your education…. if you had a great education growing up, wouldn’t you want the same for our kids in our community? Someone paid for your education; now it’s time to pay it forward. You have seen all of the devastating cuts our schools will have to make if we do not pass this levy. For your community to be your community, we together need to keep it strong. A strong school education is a must. We at Camas Prairie Eye Clinic ask you to please vote YES for the upcoming school levy on May 21st!
