The video is only 1:36 in length so you may want to give it a look. I did so and my attention immediately turned to our bond measure where we badly need something to get parents and community members engaged in the conversation and seeing the need for additional learning environment capacity in our system. Give it a look with this context in mind.
Do we have the facts on our side related to the need for additional capacity or is the opposite true leading to what Pink says will be people disagreeing with you? What are the facts about this need? If you were going to lead the campaign with a question what would it be? I would be very interested in your thoughts as we continue conversations on how best to meet our current and projected student enrollment needs with quality learning environments aligned with our Future Ready initiative.
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The stated goal for the bond is to meet our current and projected student enrollment needs with quality learning environments aligned with our Future Ready initiative.
My discussions with Maple Valley residents, who are almost exclusively parents of school aged children, lead me to believe that people do understand the overcrowding issue and support the bond and the solution it represents, but a minority does not understand why $125,000,000 was needed to alleviate the overcrowding.
To that minority, the message attached to the bond seemed to have become “let’s spend $125 million and add a school and change things around to eliminate overcrowding and lead our kids to success in the 21st century and help Maple Valley thrive” and not as much “let’s solve this overcrowding problem”. No one I’ve spoken to has ever mentioned “quality learning environments” or the “Future Ready” initiative.
If I were leading the bond campaign, I would focus solely on ending the overcrowding in our schools. I would make sure that the facts supporting my solution were not connected to other ideas like sharing a building with a branch college campus, or a nearby high-tech business park that could partner with the high school to offer internships and the like, or how the community would have another source of jobs and new contributors to the tax base. For most voters, if they're anything like me, it's best to keep things simple. Once I was certain my solutions focused only on the best way to end overcrowding, my question would be ”Can we end overcrowding?”
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