In a general election in Scott County there are 60 plus voting locations. The Davenport Community School District (DCSD) which has a bonding authorization matter on the ballot today encompases perhaps half of them — say 30. The number of locations has been reduced to six.
The conventional wisdom behind that is to save costs during a predictably lower turnout election. Ignoring the possibility probability that the reduction aggravates poor turn-out, we just want to point out that whatever the turn-out the average per voting location might be expected to be one-sixth of the total. Yours truly voted at about 5:00 PM at one of the library locations which I would expect to be busier than the average. The vote count was 208 with three hours left to vote.
That seems very low at that time of day even for a school related election.
Granted the DCSD related vote does not have an increase in property taxes on the table although the current DCSD Board (not up for election today) could rebate property taxes under the terms of the pro-forma kitchen-sink authorization. They of course won’t rebate taxes and everybody knows it and the likely voters are not expecting that they will.
The vote might be a contest between the current boards sycophants and people just interested in sending a message knowing the board will do what it wants under previous authorization because it can. The very wording says so.
The current DCSD Board is going through the motions, the intent is window dressing while pursuing a vague authorization for what they intend to do anyway — the bulk we suspect will be to cope with previous poor Board choices or lack of attention to basic academics that resulted in the DCSD’s poor academic performance resulting in the decline in enrollment. People are not beating a path to the DCSD academic mousetrap.
The decline in enrollment is the symptom of the problem, a manifestation, but the authorization vote if approved, they will claim, sustains their planned treatment of the symptom — which is to excise, consolidate schools and spend to do that, while the crappy education DCSD administrators and educators deliver goes on, complete with sinecure and continued lack of serious accountability.
So the DCSD vote could be a vote on confidence or not in the DCSD Board, between sycophants of the current Board and the informed and disgusted. The later may feel it fruitless and not show up because they know the purpose of the vote is window dressing. We will see how it goes, and perhaps have more comment.
Thanking the Bettendorf School Board for the FOUR giant post cards, in full Bulldog black & gold, two weeks prior to the vote. Without the post cards, I may not have been aware of the opportunity to vote… NO!
The only Bettendorf School news I saw in the past month was BHS required attendance
“Queer Pride Rally” (Iowastandard.com).
I asked you to correct the website.
theiowastandard.com is the correct website.