I attended a budget meeting last night that was open to the public. My past life as an accountant (government and public) served me well in researching the financial statements, audit reports, and budgets that the Ki-Be School District has posted on their website. It also gave me a decent understanding of how the funding works. I normally would spend some time taking a few deep breaths, doing some more research, removing my emotions from an essay about something like this. Emotion has a way of distracting from credibility and objectivity.

But I got home and was frustrated and angry and started writing in my journal.

Here is part of that journal entry:

“Well, that was interesting.

I’m just going to say, I left disappointed. And that’s the core of my message, I think. Disappointment.

The budget meeting was well attended. The community was engaged. The 3 board members present were all very new, and what a time to be elected to the board.

I had a scripted question I asked and it boiled down to two questions really — what is the long term strategy for recovery, and when will it be shared with the community?

It went over like a turd in a punch bowl. I didn’t follow the more predictable (expected?) flow:

• audience asks emotional questions,

• board/admin soothes audience nerves,

• rinse and repeat.

And it did get emotional, justifiably so. As a community we are being asked to absorb some serious pain, grit our teeth, and bear it. This is prolonged pain with no resolution in sight - no plan showing how cuts now could benefit our community and kids in the future. We aren’t getting the “this will only hurt for an hour” that a strategic plan could prepare us for. We are getting, “This will hurt, it will continue to hurt, and nobody seems willing to explain how these sacrifices actually lead to recovery.”

I felt like one of the board members tried to “handle” me - and the consensus in the room seemed that we all know b—sh— when we see it/hear it/smell it. When asked for a vision or plan, the answer was that there were “too many unknowns” to create a strategy. I thought, “Y’all, that is the heart of strategic planning — keeping your focus during those unknowns.” The response felt designed to avoid accountability rather than create confidence. AND, what’s so special then about the other schools who are operating with a strategic plan? Are they mystics? No. Ironically, the person who said there were too many unknowns is or was on another school’s board… and that school does, in fact, have a strategic plan. Covering several years. And it’s on their website.

I keep going back to Moses Lake SD. Man, I’d love to talk to the folks there. They have a school board meeting Thursday night. They have a Citizens’ Financial Oversight Committee. I can’t believe I have committee envy.

Strategic planning is not “too hard because of unknowns.” Budgeting is literally planning under uncertainty. This is confusing “we can’t predict everything” with “we don’t want to commit to a visible recovery framework.”

And it’s a cop out.

I pushed back a bit but it was pretty clear I was alienating people right out of the gate, and that doesn’t really inspire change. That’s exactly the kind of behavior that would provide another excuse for continued opacity.

My confidence is waning. My disappointment is growing. And now my b.s.-o-meter is pegged out.

I want to write another objective piece. But the more I observe and dig and question and COMPARE to other schools, the closer my frustration gets to the surface.

And I keep being so …

Disappointed.

People are heavily focused on grants as a solution. At this point, anything that moves any needle should be a welcomed idea, although grants are a different beast from my understanding and experience. Usually you have to pay the costs up front, and then get reimbursed. In our current state of implosion, that ain’t happening. There’s nothing to pay up front with. Hell, we’re borrowing money to pay regular expenses (at an interest rate of what, 4.something percent?).

And lord, the requirements for keeping grants going… it’s a much bigger effort than filling out apps and getting free money.

Kudos to the board and admin for not squashing anyone’s dreams though, because what IS important from the discussion is the PASSION of people wanting to save the school and community.

Even when they feel like they’re being dragged through hell.

Enough.”

Board Meeting Monday Night

Last Monday I posted about the current situation with the school. I then went to my first ever school board meeting. I wanted to get the lay of the land. Were people in the community attending? Engaged? Did the board meetings seem to offer transparency? How were public comments handled?

The meeting room was packed when I arrived — a very good sign I thought. Though, at first I was taken aback by how many attendees were children. Like, young children. I thought it must be part of some sort of civics class or perhaps an impassioned speech from the youngest and cutest to save our school.

It was much more powerful than that.

The youngest students attended a program that taught the kids in three different languages — English, Spanish, and ASL. They demonstrated their fluency in all three through songs and exercises. I recognized kids from my bus route. They were engaged, excited, learning — everything you could dream for a child’s education. Tears were shed amongst us adults.

The other group of students were older, high school age. They were in a program that engaged students in middle school through high school. The objective of the program was to expose kids to opportunities in secondary education. Two of the students had already earned $56,000 each in college scholarships.

It was impossible to look these kids in the eye and imagine failing them, or failing a levy.

I was equal parts inspired and ashamed.

The kids left the meeting and we switched gears to typical board meeting agenda items, all with the vision of those kids still burning in our memories.

I came away with three observations from the meeting:

1. No strategy was mentioned regarding the financial problem and the cuts to the budget that needed to be made. No timeline, no milestones, and no goals. It could be that no strategy exists, or it could be that it just wasn’t communicated. Both problems are fixable, but the first one is harder. Both are necessary.

2. Budget meetings open to the public were suggested by the superintendent and scheduled for that Friday and this coming Tuesday (May 19th). I hoped it was a sign of willing transparency and maybe a chance to do a deeper dive into our current state and hopefully our strategy.

3. The school was in the middle of a financial audit. These are regularly scheduled audits, just part of business. But, the state would report its findings later that week.

On Thursday a story hit the news wires —Ki-Be was looking at a $2 million dollar shortfall and possibly entering into “Binding Conditions” - which isn’t a state takeover, but is more direct state management of the school budget. The state would allow the school to “borrow” against future revenues, but would also require the school’s strict administration of a budget plan. It means trading future flexibility for immediate financial survival.

Borrowing against future revenues also comes with costs — financial and otherwise.

Open Budget Meeting

Last Friday Ki-Be had a school budget meeting open to the community.

There were at least 9 community attendees, 2 board members, and the financial director and superintendent.

I’d gone in expecting to discuss budget cuts, a longer-term strategy, and hard numbers. None of that was discussed, but that doesn’t mean the meeting was pointless, or non-budget-related. Far from it. What I did hear was a community concerned and with limited information. That tracks with all of the rumors and guesswork and comments I’ve heard. When people don’t get information, ideas are pieced together to create a narrative that might make sense of a situation - for better or for worse.

What I heard was a community that struggled with uncertainty and lack of communication.

And that is probably the easiest thing to repair in this crisis.

It is the most powerful tool the administration has.

It is also terrifying.

What the Community Members Seemed to Want

Engagement, Answers, Transparency

Engagement

Meeting attendees offered multiple suggestions for grants, fund raisers, sponsorships and other ways to replace the funds lost from the failed levy. They were earnest and creative, and willing to help. I imagined the Herculean effort it would take for a fundraising effort to replace the $2 million dollar shortfall, and quietly shuddered.

Grants and fundraisers may help, but they are unlikely to solve a structural funding problem of this scale.

But the point I took away was that the room contained engaged community members with creative solutions and a “never say die” mentality.

And they were there to help, even in an information vacuum.

Most districts would give their eye-teeth for that kind of engagement.

Answers

Some attendees simply wanted one answer to the question “Are sports getting cut? And when will we know?” This isn’t a trivial ask because parents are looking for after school activities to keep their kids busy. Besides the less tangible skills and engagement that sports offer — discipline, teamwork, resilience, accountability — they also act as runways to other opportunities like scholarships, travel, mentorship.

And when sports are cut, parents move their kids to schools that offer those opportunities.

Families also face timing concerns around transfer rules and athletic eligibility under WIAA regulations, adding another layer of uncertainty when trying to make decisions for their children.

Logistically, it’s an issue of transportation, parents rearranging work schedules, possibly even relocation.

And from an administration side, cutting sports all but guarantees reduced enrollment, which impacts future revenues directly.

Extracurricular programs are not just activities. In many communities, they are part of what keeps families attached to a district.

When opportunities disappear, some families leave. And in public education, enrollment decline directly impacts future funding.

Transparency

People voiced anger that the thought process behind budget cuts wasn’t transparent. Not everyone can attend a board meeting, and meeting notes aren’t available until they’ve been approved at the next month’s board meeting. Information seemed to dissipate after the meetings, rather than reaching the broader community in a clear and usable way.

Takeaways:

What struck me most was that the people in that room were not apathetic.

They were worried.
Confused.
Frustrated.
Protective of their children.
Trying to help.

And despite the rumors, politics, fear, and uncertainty, they still showed up.

They showed up with ideas.
They showed up with questions.
They showed up with specific concerns that, in many cases, seemed entirely reasonable and addressable.

Because financial crises can sometimes be survived.

Communities can survive cuts.
They can survive painful decisions.
They can even survive failure.

But prolonged confusion and collapsing trust are much harder things to recover from.

What seemed absent from both meetings was a clearly communicated long-term strategy.

Not just cuts.
Not just survival.

A roadmap.

What gets protected?
What gets reduced?
What are the milestones for recovery?
What does success look like one year from now?

Communities can endure painful realities surprisingly well when they understand the plan.

What they struggle with is uncertainty.

Post 1: The Death Rattle of My Public School
Post 2: I Wish This Story Had a Villain

As promised, the next installment of this series is a compare/contrast piece about what it looks like when schools survive this financial crisis, and what it looks like when they fail.

The Problem - a Little Background

Decreased enrollment (which means decreased funding), increased costs, failed levies, and critically low “reserves”. I’d also add “lack of community trust”.

You can almost recite the comments people will make if a school levy fails. In all school districts across the country, if a levy fails, the comments will be, “the administration is paid too much”, “mismanagement!”, “people don’t know what they’re doing!” The idea of “corruption” is implied.

Last week when I posted my essay about how school funding works and I started looking for indications of mismanagement and corruption, I just didn’t find anything alarming. Someone suggested I simply call the school administration to get more information, complaining that voters are lazy and don’t inform themselves, it’s all as simple as a phone call to an administrator. “School funding is not difficult to understand.”

And that contradiction is really the heart of the issue. If it’s not difficult to understand, why does it take a phone call to get the answers? Why would a person need to contact an “insider” for information?

Educating the masses (beyond the children) is an easy and missed opportunity.

What I learned is that school funding at the most basic level is pretty straight-forward. It is just not communicated. And a community will vote against confusion before they’ll vote for an issue.

Our school has all but depleted its reserves (that emergency fund you and I would use when we are budgeting and our car broke down).

Our school administration wants to rebuild those reserves. As a community, we want that to happen as well.

Confusion is expensive, and could cost us local control of our own school, and any say in our community’s kids’ education.

The Impact is Pretty Bleak

As promised, here are 5 schools that were in similar situations as ours, and what failure looked like:

1. Inglewood, CA — state receivership (that’s like bankruptcy and having the court oversee your budget and finances) since 2012, major enrollment loss, school closures, and loss of local control.

2. Detroit, MI — massive enrollment collapse. Detroit enrollment fell 72% from 2000 to 2015, and chronic fiscal problems led to long-term state involvement.

3. Chester Upland, PA — receivership and repeated financial recovery plans. The district remains under a receiver process, with amended recovery plans still being filed.

4. East Ramapo, NY — state monitors with fiscal and academic oversight. The state monitor structure includes balanced-budget oversight, conflict-resolution authority, cost-saving recommendations, and even power to override actions inconsistent with the plan.

5. Santa Rosa, CA — warning-stage example. Santa Rosa closed six schools to cut $25 million, but still faced possible state takeover due largely to long-term declining enrollment.

Enrollment declines are the canary in the coal mine of school funding. Sometimes that’s a community voting with its feet. Sometimes it’s the local economy quietly collapsing underneath the school district. Sometimes, it’s both.

It kicks off a spiral — enrollment declines, funding declines, opportunities for kids begin to shrivel up, and the next step is for the community to fail levies.

Failed levies mean shrinking reserves as administration struggles to respond to the cut in funding.

Communities see the school continue to overspend, whatever confidence remained begins to dissolve. More kids are taken out of the school, levies fail, lather, rinse, repeat.

All 5 schools (and more) followed similar death-spirals.

Confusion is deadly.

Schools that Survived, and How

Here are 5 schools that survived, I especially wanted to look at more local ones:

1. Pasco, WA — close to home. Pasco used painful budget moves, reserves, and state advances to stabilize, and by early 2026 was rebuilding reserves while still warning that enrollment dips and federal cuts remain threats.

2. Richland, WA — also close to home. Richland’s levy messaging is blunt: levies fund staffing, class size, AP/world languages, and programs beyond state basic education.

3. Seattle, WA — not “fixed,” but instructive. Seattle eliminated a projected $104 million 2025-26 deficit using fund balance, interfund-loan adjustments, state/local revenue, and central-office reductions, while admitting the structural gap remains.

4. Vallejo, CA — long recovery. Vallejo went into state receivership after financial collapse and a $60 million emergency loan, but regained full local control after more than 20 years. That’s a survival story, but also a warning: recovery can take decades.

5. Moses Lake, WA — Moses Lake faced a massive budget shortfall tied to levy failures, declining enrollment, accounting problems, and years of structural imbalance. The district made brutal cuts — including more than 200 layoffs and major spending reductions — while also rebuilding community trust through stronger financial oversight, citizen committees, transparent public communication, and a successful 2025 levy campaign.

What Works

Survivors do five things:

1. Name the problem early and plainly.

2. Build a multi-year recovery plan, not a one-year patch.

3. Protect classroom trust while cutting structurally.

4. Communicate constantly with the public.

5. Rebuild reserves on purpose.

Communication is the winning move. Not “answer the phone on the off-chance a voter calls with questions.” Outreach and clarity. The public can forgive mistakes much faster than they can forgive confusion.

I’m looking for good signs, signs that the school administration is on a path to recovery.

Last week when I researched the school funding and financials, I found that on the website, the monthly financials stopped being publicly posted in July on 2025. I contacted the financial director and asked if they were available or had been moved. The next day, all monthly financials were posted to the website and the financial director emailed me to let me know.

It felt like a tiny confirmation of the hunch I’m circling - the communication problem is less “lying through omission” and more “oh crud, we missed that”.

As a Member of the Community, What Do I Want?

It’s a small ask, but a powerful one. I’ll always vote in favor of school levies. That’s not a question for me. If anything, the past two weeks have cemented that decision for me. It’s one small action I can take to keep my school and community kids from ending up under state control.

My ask is this: What is the district’s long-term stabilization strategy, and how will I know whether it’s working?

That plan, and communication of the plan, is the difference between community support or community uncertainty.

And confusion is expensive. Ask a kid.

I’m really looking forward to tonight’s school board meeting. It’s at 6:30 p.m. Monday, May 11, 2026.

It’s a wonder more people aren’t doing it.

And then, every spring, I am reminded why the masses aren’t flocking to the countryside to begin their farming career.

It probably has to do with irrigation.

This spring I hauled out the irrigation artillery — timers, fittings, glue, sprinkler heads, 837 miles of hose and pipe… My optimism was foolishly high, this year I was sure I’d get it right.

I think that every year.

In the fall I gather everything — draining hoses, taking batteries out of timers, blowing out pipes, dismantling the twisted web of cobbled-together parts from the season’s efforts to get water to parts of my property.

Each fall I develop some new little care-taking task in hopes of it making the spring task of setting it all up again a little easier. It doesn’t work.

And I’m reminded of Clark Griswold and his endless, foolish optimism when he starts hauling out his Christmas decorations.

My watering system looks an awful lot like his “electrical system” of daisy-chained power strips, plug-ins stacked on top of each other, and confusing spaghetti of wire. In my case it’s manifolds, hoses and lines, pipe, sprinklers, sprayers, and so on.

It is impressive in all of the wrong ways.

Too many sprinklers running and the pump shuts down. That’s the easy math portion of the set-up. Programming the timers is an exercise in software coding and a long-lost form of witchcraft with roots in voodoo.

Because the job requires so much swearing, I’ve taken to pre-swearing, starting up to a week in advance with my swearing, just so I can get it all in. If I try to squeeze all of the swearing required during the job itself, I’m afraid I’ll run out of oxygen.

This year was no different. Some timers work, some don’t, some sprinklers would be more useful as garden art than anything functional. Hoses — and let’s be honest, we all have that one hose that is our favorite, just like that one burner on the stove that gets used all the time — spring leaks on contact.

I finally strung together a useful line of emitters for some trees and sprinklers for the yard nearby. The timer worked. Multiple tests revealed no leaks or strain on the pump. With that small success early in the irrigation process, I sat down on the patio to reflect on my achievement. The timer ran for 10 minutes, watering the yard.

“Great” I thought, “I must have left it on the manual setting during one of my tests.”

I did not panic. I didn’t even swear. The yard needed the watering anyway.

The timer switched off, and then came back on again, this time running the emitters and sprayers on the trees.

“Um, I didn’t think I did that” I thought, still refusing to panic. The timer was cycling. Surely that was a thing they did.

Surely.

Then the sprinklers came on.

And then the timer switched back and forth, repeatedly, between the yard sprinklers and the tree emitters. It was an accidentally perfectly timed redneck version of the fountains at the Bellagio.

I commenced swearing. It was like the timer was trying to offset, trying to make up for the other 3 timers I had to throw away because they mysteriously gave up in the middle of the winter when they weren’t in use. My carefully swaddled timers, taken inside for the winter, stored in the damn living room because they are so finicky. Next year I’ll have to fully incorporate them into family life, apparently, to keep them happy.

No sooner had I turned off the timer than another came on in another spot. And the hose developed a split, erupting in a plume of water delivered enthusiastically to a spot where I did not want water.

I hadn’t dealt, ever, with over-achieving irrigation and hadn’t done enough pre-swearing to prepare for it. My usual battle-moan of spring is, “nothing is working, everything is broken!” But this year, everything worked enough for it to be … bad.

As the web of irrigation and timers achieved sentience around me, I resisted the urge to go full Clark Griswold and take out my frustration on any yard art. But, the urge was strong. Really strong.

Instead, I turned off all of the water and went inside to admire my glowing, golden, uneven and hard-won tan.

I’d try the irrigation again tomorrow.

That escalated quickly.

Arguments and observations I’ve heard often when it comes to school funding are:

• The administration is overpaid

• Funding is misused

• Mismanagement in general by administration

• Half of the total property tax paid by property owners goes to schools, and that’s problematic

• and what I can only refer to as “other”.

I really didn’t know how schools are funded, beyond my own unfounded belief that “levies = good”. And the “mismanagement” comment I heard repeatedly deserved some attention.

So I started digging around. First, to find out if the comments I’d heard could be proven or disproven. Second, to find out how the whole machine works, because this is not obvious or easy. You know how when people get angry that they have to explain their perspective on a subject (especially a political one), they say, “do your own research!”? Well, this is a classic example of why that is a weaponized cop-out.

The information is hard to find, if it exists publicly at all. And if you do find anything, you need an interpreter, financial analyst and tarot reader to understand it all.

That’s not a huge exaggeration.

And that is a big part of the problem for anyone trying to make an informed vote when levies arise.

I first went digging through the school district’s website to find two specific things: board meeting minutes and financials.

I found three financial audits, board meeting minutes through February, 2026, and monthly financial statements up until July, 2025. Sparse, clunky, and delayed, but none of the information reeked of a cover-up or titillating scandal.

The audits were clean, but with warnings: the district was in financial trouble.

The board meeting minutes are uneventful, and the same observation is made by everyone in the meetings: the district is in financial trouble.

So then I went to the County Assessor’s website to look at the tax booklets and see what the actual levies have been for the past 5 years. Nothing new there.

And then, I went to see the election results from the levy elections for the past 5 years.

It all painted a very dull, non-scandalous, typical, sad story. My sputtering indignation that has been looking for a target remains without a single clear villain or event.

That would have been so much easier. Now, almost 40 years after graduation, my school is back at it, making me do homework.

How Do Schools Get Money?

Federal: a very small amount of money is given to schools for specific special programs. Very small amount, very specific purposes. The community has virtually no say in what the school gets or how it’s spent.

State: Washington State gives Ki-Be money based on student enrollment. This money is bare-minimum and covers only the basics for educating kids. Limited flexibility in how this is spent. The community has some influence on this spending, but very little.

Local: levies are voted on by the community, assessed on property taxes, and given to the school. This money has much more flexibility in how it’s spent. It can be used for extra programs like band and sports. The community votes for these, this is where communities can make a difference (for better or for worse).

Where That Money Comes From

• Federal: national taxes, small portion, highly restricted

• State: largely from property taxes, redistributed based on enrollment

• Local: levies that go directly to the district

Public schools are funded mostly based on student enrollment, along with state, federal, and local dollars. That money is used to run the district—pay staff, operate buildings, fund programs, and cover day-to-day costs.

What would be “savings” in a household budget is called reserves in a school budget—the cushion set aside for rising costs, inflation, or to get through something like a levy failure.

So what is this “financial trouble,” exactly?

I kept getting this sense, and at times it was openly stated, that the school was in “financial trouble”, but I never could get a clear definition.

“Reserves are too low.”

“The school’s underfunded.”

So I went to the state’s financial reports (OSPI) to find the actual numbers.

Revenue didn’t collapse—but it did decline, dropping by about $700,000 from 2024 to 2025. At the same time, spending increased by about $1 million.

That gap—roughly $800,000 more going out than coming in—came straight out of reserves.

So in one year, the district’s reserves dropped by nearly $1 million, from about $2.36 million in 2024 to $1.37 million in 2025.

That’s what “financial trouble” looks like.

When funding drops—because enrollment declines or levies fail—but costs don’t drop with it, districts make up the difference by spending down reserves.

That doesn’t mean spending suddenly spiked in some giant administrative shopping spree. In fact, when you look at the numbers, spending mostly followed normal cost increases—things like salaries, benefits, and inflation. The bigger issue is timing. Funding began to decline as enrollment dipped and temporary dollars went away, but spending couldn’t adjust as quickly. For a period of time, more money was going out than coming in, and the difference came out of reserves.

That’s how a district can go from stable to strained without any single dramatic event.

And once that cushion is gone, the margin for error disappears.

Could a Levy Have Helped?

Probably. A successful levy would have brought in additional local funding, which could have reduced the need to draw down reserves and bought the district more time to adjust.

But levies are meant to supplement funding, not replace it. Even with a levy, the underlying issue—declining revenue and costs that take time to adjust—would still need to be addressed.

When I wrote last week about the loss of programs, I wrote it from an emotional and, honestly, uneducated perspective. I hadn’t even voted in the last two levies.

As the essay was shared—and as people from other schools and even other states said, “this is happening here too”—I started asking better questions.

I hoped it was mismanagement. Or even a scandal. Villains are much easier to deal with than systems.

The reality is less dramatic, and more uncomfortable.

A levy likely would have kept programs alive and slowed the drawdown of reserves. That matters. That could’ve kept kids on a positive trajectory. It also would send the message to our kids and other communities: this is a place that is involved and cares. I find that very hopeful.

I understand there may be mistrust between the community and the administration. But passing a levy isn’t a mechanism for lining anyone’s pockets—it’s a way to support students.

It wouldn’t have solved the core issue.

But it would’ve helped the kids.

The problem isn’t runaway spending, or at least it doesn’t seem to be. It’s that revenue declined, and spending couldn’t (or didn’t) adjust fast enough to match it.

And what’s harder to see—and harder to fix—is that I can’t yet find a clear, public plan for how that gap gets closed going forward.

In the meantime, the impact shows up where it always does.

With kids.

The next school board meeting is May 11th, 2026, 6:30 pm. It is held at the high school in the district board room. You can also attend via zoom link.

Next in what has become a series: schools that survived this scenario, schools that didn’t: why, and how?

When I first started driving a school bus, I viewed it as a necessary evil and a useful skill.

I do not enjoy waking up at 5:30 a.m. and being publicly functional before sunrise. I am not, by nature, a “good morning!” person. But the job offered flexibility, paid training, and a commute that consists primarily of not commuting.

And?

And I love my town.
And I love my school.

I attended Ki-Be from first grade through twelfth, graduating in 1988. I played sports. I took AP English and AP Calculus. We had FFA, Band, Choir…

Back in my day—back when the walk to the bus stop was uphill both ways and fraught with danger (mostly the danger of distraction)—we had opportunities.

I got my driver’s license, my pesticide applicator’s license, and my tractor driver’s license through that school. We had an actual school tractor and trailer that we learned to drive to earn that license.

(We also had a pig trailer used to haul livestock for FFA events. It was funded by the community. I know this because, in 10th grade, I got busted making out in that pig trailer during halftime of the homecoming game. This remains, to this day, mildly embarrassing.)

We had music.

Kids who wanted to pursue things our small town couldn’t fully offer—dental assisting, DJing, specialized trades—were bused to Tri-Tech.

When I applied to be a substitute bus driver, the district trained me and paid for me to get my CDL.

That school invested in me.

Now I drive the bus for the next generation.

I have friends I’ve known for over 45 years, and their grandkids ride my routes. Every now and then I get to say, “Don’t make me tell your Pop-Pop what you did,” which produces a deeply satisfying mix of shock and immediate behavioral correction.

It works.

Our town is growing.

Our school is collapsing.

Levies have failed. More than once.

I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t vote in the last two levies, for all of the dumb excuses we all use, none of them good. The biggest excuse (and most common, probably) - I didn’t understand.

And now we are left with the consequences of my (and others) complacency. I apologize. It will not happen again.

Levies fund the things that make school more than a holding pen for children:

• Band.

• Sports.

• Transportation for sports.

• Access to programs like Tri-Tech.

Without levies, those things don’t get “trimmed.”

They disappear.

The arguments I hear—at the bus barn, at the grocery store, floating around like dust in a sunbeam—are predictable:

Mismanagement and overpaid administration.

And those things can be true, they often are.

But the inconvenient math is this:

• Even if you gutted administration.

• Even if you slashed salaries.

• You still wouldn’t come close to funding the programs that are being cut.

So what we’re left with is this:

The school can only offer what the community is willing to support.

And right now?

The community is supporting nothing:

• No sports.

• No music.

• No vocational pathways.

• No Tri-Tech.

• No early exposure to trades, skills, or careers that don’t require a four-year degree and a mountain of debt.

• No certifications that let a kid graduate and walk straight into a job.

No reason, really, for a lot of kids to feel connected to school at all.

And that’s the part that should scare people.

Academics alone don’t keep kids engaged.

Connection does.
Opportunity does.
Belonging does.

Take those away, and what you’re left with is the bare minimum:

A building.
A schedule.
A system.

We like to say “the schools are failing.”

But schools don’t exist in a vacuum.

They reflect the communities that build them—or choose not to.

And so here we are:

A growing town.
A shrinking school.

A community that, for a whole host of reasons—financial, emotional, political, personal, laziness (again, I apologize)—has decided not to fund the things that once made this place matter.

I don’t think people set out to cut their own kids off at the knees. I did not believe that by not voting I was ending the trajectory of a kid — possibly one on my own bus, who I know personally — pursuing sports, or band, or becoming a dental assistant.

But intent doesn’t change outcome.

Once the programs are gone?

They don’t come back easily.

You don’t just reboot a band program.
You don’t magically rebuild athletics.
You don’t snap your fingers and recreate vocational pipelines.

You lose momentum.
You lose staff.
You lose kids.

And eventually, you lose the thing that made the school feel like a place worth showing up to.

We used to have a pig trailer.

We used it to haul livestock.

(And, occasionally, to make poor but memorable life choices that helped shape who we became.)

It was funded by the community.

That detail matters more than it should.

Because it means there was a time when people here were willing to invest—not just in education, but in experience. In opportunity. In kids. In ourselves.

Now?

No sports.
No music.
No trades.

That’s not just a budget issue.

That’s a cultural one. It’s a credibility issue.

It says something—loudly, shamefully—about who we are willing to be as a community.

It will take years—if not decades—to rebuild what’s being lost.
To rebuild programs.
To rebuild trust.
To rebuild the idea that this is a place worth investing in.

A place worth raising kids.

This is how decline starts, not with a bang, but with a series of “no” votes, small cuts, and quiet disappearances.

Until one day, you look around and realize:

The thing you thought would always be there…

isn’t.

I’m sorry.

The next school board meeting is Monday, May 11.

In the “good” column of this character’s traits are things like “persistence” and “hard working”. In the “bad” column are “alarming use of swear words” …

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And then, of course, the closer I got to home, the more things went wrong.

To the point t…

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But the craziest adventures, I swear, are always on the farm. It does not disappoint.

I wish it would.

The trip home clocked in at around 27 hours with two layovers. “Arduou…

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It’s been a weird month.

I know - you’re thinking, “you’re writing that from a vacation rental in New Zealand, don’t expect any sympathy from me.”

I don’t.

But both things can be true - we can be having an amazing experience and a few weird ones as well. At the same time.

In our wanderings around New Zealand we had a window of perfect weather for visiting Te Anau and Milford Sound. Roughly 413 years ago, I lived in Te Anau. (actually, it was 36 years ago, but you know the feeling.)

I started out on a station of almost 3000 acres where they raised sheep, deer, sheep, cattle, sheep, racehorses, and sheep. My job was to ride shotgun in the farm truck, open and close gates, and assist with lambing season.

On a station of that size, lambing is a whole season. It’s not lambing week or lambing month. It’s an entire season during which the landscape changes colors, rivers rise and fall, daylight saving time starts and you adjust to it.

We rode out every morning at 7 a.m. in the red farm truck, the station owner and I. We each had a sandwich and thermos of coffee, and wore several layers of clothes. On the flatbed of the truck perched Cody, the border collie. It was just like a documentary about lambing season in New Zealand.

A typical day’s work included trying to match up lost lambs with their frantic mothers and “assisting” struggling ewes with their difficult lambing. A major component of lambing season - of pretty much any farming season ever - is excrement. I was constantly muddy, covered in sheep shit, and usually sporting a healthy schmear of afterbirth, blood, or sheep urine. Gross, by any standards.

During my stint on the station, an underlying current of rage permeated my days. Not my rage. I was 19 and living in New Zealand, so rage was low on my list of felt experiences. It was a rage directed at me by my boss’s wife. I couldn’t quite put it together and assumed it was because I was American or any number of other personality flaws. I tried to be even more helpful, more cheerful, quieter - tried to change to accommodate the criticisms and snide remarks she threw at me like darts.

Finally, after an episode in the kitchen so insignificant I don’t even remember the details, my boss turned to me and said, “she’s mean to you because she thinks we are having an affair.” I was shocked for at least two reasons.

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I was a tomboy. Back when kids were sorted into neat little lanes—girls in pink, boys in blue—I lived somewhere in between. I had Barbie dolls, but they rode Breyer horses and drove Tonka trucks. I liked my white-blonde hair short and was of…

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I’m on the Cavalcade this week and unable to post anything “current” due to unreliable connectivity. I guess that answers the tagline question of “how can you be out of office as a traveling writer?” My office is everywhere - park benches, beach cabanas, a lot of airport terminals…

A better statement would just be that I’m unreachable, or out of range,…

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