Do you remember your school nurse? Your school librarian? Your school guidance counselor, or even your custodian? Well, the kids who attend Seattle Public Schools probably don’t! At current funding levels, the district doesn’t have enough money to pay for a full-time librarian, nurse, guidance counselor, and custodian for every one of its 102 schools.
Right now, for instance, we only have .62 nurses working in each of Seattle’s public schools. And the only reason we even have .62 nurses per school instead of .1 nurses is because Seattle pays for a majority of its nurses with money from an operations levy. (The state only pays for 9 nurses for 102 schools; the district employs 63 nurses with those funds plus the levy.) That levy, as well as another levy that funds badly needed building improvements, is up for a renewal vote this month. You should vote YES to renew both of them, or else our kids are going to be wandering around in freezing cold, crumbling elementary schools and giving each other measles-cancer.
We wish we could be a bit less apocalyptic, but, fuck! Have you been following the news about all this? No? Okay, we forgive you. But let us back up and fill you in.
