Jeannette Papadakis | Anacortes

After two doorbelling days, two phonebank nights, twenty-four sign rallies, and forty speaking engagements with our superintendent, district business manager, and school board representatives, the fate of our "no frills" but crucial replacement levy will be known next Tuesday. Not to mention the two informational direct mail pieces, four post cards, many advertising photo shoots, several letters to the editor, and hours and hours of data base management work to organize voter lists and more!

As I held my "support our schools" sign above my head on Sunday on the corner amongst the weekly protesters of patriot supporters vs. peace protesters, I thought why do I need to join this fight? Aren't having good schools and providing our children a decent education a principle we can all agree on? It is in our constitution.

With our aging demographics, the majority over 50 years living here 10 years or less, voting on providing "basic education" within our levies is always at risk. While campaigning for our levy, I am asked repeatedly by our citizens on why we are asking for more money??? Isn't that the state's job to pay for education??? I too, ask myself that question.

Sherry Krainick | Bothell

As a member of the Citizens for Northshore Schools Committee working to pass two renewal levies and a bond measure, I found myself looking at the big picture: What is it that we are paying for? Education. Is that the only answer? No!

Let me explain. We are asking local voters to fund the education for the K-12 students in our local districts, and for most of our districts, 20 percent of the funding comes from the local taxpayers. That adds up to a lot of money. That money educates students; it employees teachers, para-educators, nurses, office staff, cooks, kitchen staff, the recess teachers and the administrators who make sure our kids get the education outlined in state law. Those are all local jobs! Public education, providing free and equal access to all students, is also our largest public works program.

Let’s keep our school teachers and staff employed; it’s good for the economy! Let’s pass the bonds to make the investments in our buildings, making upgrades for energy efficiency and qualifying for additional grants. Energy savings returns additional monies to the bottom line of every school’s operating budget, and we create more jobs!

If you are pro-education, you are pro-jobs! We need to retain the teachers and staff we have to deliver a quality education to our kids. Vote Yes!

Kris Lytton | Anacortes

As state funding for public education continues to decline, school levies have become a high-stake endeavor. Levy committees encounter a great deal of stress as a result of the high-stake reality that if measures fail, school districts face an over-whelming fiscal crisis. In Anacortes the current levy accounts for 26% of the budget.

Having volunteered on levy and bond committees for the past 14 years, I can attest to the large amount of time and effort that goes into these measures. Serving as a chair for a campaign is a full-time job for 2-3 months which is a huge commitment for so many with already busy schedules. And, the amount of time devoted by superintendents and their staff to provide factual information and interact with the community is also huge.

There currently exists voter discontent for the state’s failure “to make ample provision for education” and the notion exists among voters that as long as communities continue to fund basic education, our State will not make education a priority. It’s hard to disagree with that point.

This method of funding schools is archaic and time consuming - and it is time for the state to make education a priority.

Tola Marts | Issaquah

It's appalling that school districts have to beg for money every few years, hat in hand, in the form of local levies just to fund basic education. Local governments recognize that housing values and community vitality are tied directly to vibrant schools, and that our globally competitive businesses require a well educated work force- why is this so hard to understand in Olympia? This is why I've done everything I can to help my local levy pass. But we should be helping assure the success of all of Washington's children, and the future of all of its communities.

Karen Sanchez | Rochester

Rochester citizens are working hard to educate our voters about the seriousness of this levy. With state funding lacking for basic education, this levy seeks to stem the loss. Usually levies are for additional programming... not this one. We are aiming to keep existing programs and lose as little as possible. We have had an aggressive Voter ID campaign and are spending our resources (tIme and money) on our 'Yes' voters. We have sent out multiple mailings, have both a website and Facebook page for online communications, and have had community meetings and presentations to help educate our voting population. Traditional sign waving and reminder phone calling are in full swing this week. Cars are displaying vote 'Yes' signs as well as hundreds of yard signs throughout the area. Rochester is a small community that often feels like its voice is not heard in the grand scheme of things....however this levy is personal. The votes matter directly to our community and funds generated from the levy stay in our district 100%. Our state legislature needs to understand that any future this state has will rely on an educated work force. Tomorrow's workers are today's students.... a well-placed investment.

Wes Brandon & Krista Tenney | Shoreline

Here in Shoreline we are going into our final push to get out our voters. We have been phoning our 'yes' voters to ensure they vote. We have been waving signs on street corners in the dark and the rain. With an all mail-in ballot and no newspaper in our area, we have to be visible and loud. We have a second mailing set to hit the voters this weekend; then we wait for the numbers.

We have a M&O levy on the ballot that pays for 21% of all that we do in Shoreline. It provides funding for our nurses - yes we still have a nurse at all schools during classroom hours, librarians at all our sites both elementary and secondary and part-time family advocates. Our M&O also supports our music-award winning jazz bands - I might add - drama and athletic programs. Thanks to all for the 50% plus one majority on this.

We have a bond issue on the ballot to rebuild both of our high schools Shorewood and Shorecrest. Our two high schools are among the last in our region to be updated. Lynnwood, Seattle and others have remodeled or rebuilt their schools already. Studies show that environment directly affects learning. Our students deserve a safe and nurturing setting for their education.

Finally we have a capital levy for technology support on the ballot. The state does not fund technology in a significant manner and the cost of software licenses, technical support and equipment repair and replacement require a significant portion of our general fund in the Shoreline School District. By placing this levy on the ballot we are able to restore money to the classroom.

The good news to the taxpayer is even if all our measures pass our average tax bill will remain unchanged.

The bad news is that even if we pass all three measures due to anticipated state budget cuts we will probably receive $2 million less for the school year 2010-11.

Cliff Brown | Snoqualmie Valley

I chair 'Valley Voters for Education,' local campaign committee supporting Snoqualmie Valley School District initiatives. I, too, will be making hundreds of phone calls this week, and e-mailing all I can imploring them to vote for the propositions on the ballot.

Leigh Stokes | Issaquah

As a parent in the Issaquah School District, and a member of our district’s levy campaign committee, I have been working since August to pass our district’s three levies. I hate doing this, but I am so committed to doing it because I know how critical this money is to the day-to-day functioning of our district. Why do I hate doing it? Because it makes me angry that we are forced to do all this work and spend all this time and money, and what we get at the end of the day is significantly less than the basics. One of the things I am in charge of for our campaign is our speaker’s bureau. For this campaign, we have spoken to over 40 groups around our community over the last five months explaining why it is so important to support the levies. Inevitably, we get the question: if these pay for the basics, why isn’t the state paying for this? Why do we have to pay for these things out of our local taxes? I thought our local taxes were for enhancements to basic education? And then I have to explain our convoluted education funding system, that it hasn’t been updated in 30 years, that it is based on gross inequities, and that as a result, we as a state are 43rd out of 50 states in per pupil funding, and that our district gets $8-10 million less in state funding than our neighboring district with the same number of students (which means they can offer a 7-period high school day when we can only offer 6), so we rely desperately on every penny we can get, and these levies provide a lot of pennies. I’ll tell you what: no one understands any of this, and no one feels good about it. Instead, they start getting angry, too.

It’s a crazy way to run an education system, to go through this dance every 2–4 years. I have to beg, borrow and steal to recruit parents in all of our schools to do phone banking, to do honk and waves, to post yard signs, to donate money, to write letters to the editor, all in support of a levy campaign that perpetuates a less-than-satisfactory status quo. Then, when I try to recruit them to do the kinds of things that would really make a difference in our kids’ lives – things like advocating for changes to the system to make it produce better outcomes for our kids and to help them be better prepared and more competitive when they go out in the world beyond high school -- they are tapped out. I cannot tell you how this frustrates me. We are trapped by a dysfunctional, out-of-date system that limits the choices our kids have and seems to be satisfied with expecting and achieving mediocrity.

Nevertheless, I will do it because I still believe in the possibilities of public education, and I have two children still going through the system. They along with every other kid needs at least the educational bare minimum to get them to any next step beyond high school, even if it is not their first choice of next steps. I realize that failing our levies would result in our kids having even less than this educational bare minimum.

Wendy Reynolds | Bothell

I’ve been doing all that I can to get the bonds and levies passed here in Northshore. From making phone calls to telling strangers in the grocery store to make sure they vote. At all events I’ve been attending (basketball games, Girl Scouts, Little Gym, swimming etc), I’ve walked around and made sure to speak to every parent about how important this vote is. When Margot was selling girl scout cookies, when she would thank them for buying cookies, I'd through in a 'don't forget to vote.'

I’ve got a message on the bottom of my email and I post voting reminders on my Facebook status. When picking up the kids from school I make sure to find at least 5 new faces and remind them to vote. I’ve put a message in our weekly PTA email as well as updated our PTA legislation website encouraging people to vote and with links to the school district website for more information on the bonds and levies. I've spent a lot of time encouraging non-registered voters to get registered and let their voice be heard.

John Stokes | Bellevue

I have been a part of our levy and bond campaigns in Bellevue since 1993. As I am doing this year, I have spent hundreds of hours as part of the steering committee planning and implementing our campaign strategy, driving around the city putting up yard signs along major roads and in neighborhoods, speaking at dozens of PTA and other community meetings about the levies, calling people to get volunteers lined up for phone bank calling and information distribution, sending countless emails to friends, contacts and community leaders urging them to vote yes on the levies, and written my share of letters to the editor. This work in almost ten levy or bond campaigns has usually been during the evenings and weekends, with some leave time during the day, to make sure that our schools continue to receive the critical funding they need so that our kids can have a good education.

For the last three levy and bond campaigns I have been the main volunteer training our phone callers and helping with the crowd flow during the four or five days of phone banking, going from 4 to almost 9 PM every day, in addition to all the other things mentioned above. During that time I have also made trips to Olympia and to district offices to talk with my legislators and testify before relevant committees for education reform and funding, as I am doing again this year. I write blogs and letters, make phone calls and send out prodigious amounts of emails all to help motivate and education people about our education standards and funding crisis and mobilize parents and community members to work for our kids. I do this levy work because we need to supplement the state funding so our kids will have a better education than just the average, and increasingly because of the abject failure of the state to provide the funding necessary so that all children will have an excellent education, much less that districts will have ample transportation, utilities and teacher resources to do the job that the state demands of them.

We in Bellevue have focused on the idea that if we create high expectations we will get high achievement, and for the most part it works, and we are focusing on how to make improvements. However, without our levies’ paying for what is basic education we would have to drastically cut the very things that make the real difference in our student’s lives, such a the seven period day that allows them to have all the classes needed to get into a good four year college or trade program and at the same time take the electives that help make them better learners and citizens.

Without the levies we lose almost 200 teachers, get to keep using 15 year old textbooks, have overcrowded classes, forgo advanced classes and adequate special education, and the learning technologies and capital improvements that we desperately need to educate our kids in the 21`st Century. In short, I spend all of this time from family, work and personal pleasures because I fear that without the extra basic funding this provides, more kids will fall through the cracks and be shortchanged in life, and another generation of adults will not be as productive and engaged citizens as we need to be a successful and vibrant community and state. So I urge you to keep moving ahead on implementation of the QEC recommendations and 2261, and fulfill the promises you made in the last legislature to stop doing things in the tired and ineffectual old ways, and move into the future with gusto and do right by our kids.

Dennis and Connie Gerlitz | Medina

We are making nightly phone calling of voters, holding lots of discussions with parents, and pounding signs into water-sogged ground.

Alison Meryweather | Issaquah

It's basic to us BUT not to the state. There is such a dichotomy between what the state funds for basic education and what the real world needs are for "basic" education. In Issaquah we are running a full levy campaign to ensure that our students get a world-class education even though the state falls far short in delivering it to them. Our community values education so we will supply our students with the computers and technology that are critical to their academic success. We will provide a 6th period for high school so that our students will have the option to attend college or pursue a technical field. Wouldn't it be amazing if our students could have a 7-period day like our surrounding districts? Our students would have many more options but are currently at a significant disadvantage.

We are not complacent. We have been working for almost a year on the campaign: GOTV phone banking, robo calls, mailers, advertising, yard signs, and speaking engagements to ensure that we do our part locally to support our schools. What has the state been doing to support our future generation?