Health & Fitness
First Refelections on the IUFSD Election
Thoughts about a completed Budget and School Board election—and "bullying" and "vandalism", too.
It’s 7:17am on Wednesday, May 16th. It’s the morning after and one cup of coffee later.
About 1300-to-1400 voters turned out. Not bad for the IUFSD, but to our mind not yet good enough.
We’re not speculating that overall results would have been different—not at all—just that many folks either don’t know or care enough to vote.
Tidbit: one writer proposed yesterday that those not in favor of Camp’s re-election should inherit a school system where only parents pay—not childless or empty-nest voters. Interesting, but thoroughly un-American, idea. More commentary in another post.
In any case, the budget passed with 68% approval. This is comfortably beyond the 60% super-majority that would have been needed to pass a tax-cap-breaking budget.
We’ve also looked at the other election numbers again. Della Lenz’ votes, almost every single one of them, could or would have been John Dawson’s. Still, it wouldn’t have changed the election results.
If they’d gone to Dawson, the numbers in the election would have looked like this:
- 797 Kerner
- 732 Kashkin
- 711 Dawson (391 + 320 Lenz)
- 705 Camp
To our eyes these numbers tell us this is something other than a simple victory. We—district voters—are apparently still quite split.
This is natural. Almost all of us have a need to characterize groups as “them” and “us”—it’s normal, human, tribal behavior. Very few of us are so rational that we escape it. Some researchers even say not only do we not escape, but we never even know it underpins our thoughts. Think of Mets and Yankee fans. We call it “pro-school” sentiment versus “cut costs”.
Mind you, this isn’t an excuse for the excesses of tribal behavior—it’s an attempt to take partisanship into account and learn something (and calm down).
We think now’s the right time for our community to more deeply examine the cries of “bully” and “vandal” that were so often and loudly heard. It is our belief that they are virtually the same issue. More important, it appears to Diligentsia that none of the screaming and ripping and flaming seemed to make any difference in the long run. What are the implications of this?
Maybe next year all the candidates can chip in and get a “gang” poster with all their names—simply urging all voters to come out.
We’d love to hear and discuss your ideas about bullying and vandalism. Let’s start a thread. Diligentsia readers, over 2500 since yesterday morning, are still clicking. Write!
