There was an election on Fargo’s school mill levy this week, the result of which was not decided by the time this column was written, but I hope it passed. It was a reasonable request from the Fargo school district to maintain budget flexibility in the face of a hypocritcal state legislature.
Ah, yes, the North Dakota legislature. The enlightened body in which they preach local control until it comes to spending money on education. Then it’s the legislature’s job to protect citizens from onerous property taxes, because a legislator from Williston certainly knows more about the needs of the Fargo school district than an actual citizen of the Fargo school district.
If you were from an alien planet like Mars or Los Angeles, and just touched down in Fargo last week, you knew there was a school vote upcoming because of the volume of cranky letters to the editor in the local newspapers and the volume of cranky callers to talk-radio shows.
Most touched on the easy talking points of Davies High School in south Fargo (“It’s a Taj Mahal!!!!) and the “free-spending” school board (“It’s not their money!”). It mattered not the vote was on an operational levy, not a building one, so the unapproved building of Davies High had nothing to do with anything. But raising the spectre of Fargo’s own Beverly Hills High was too easy to resist.
It’s much like opponents of the Fargo-Moorhead diversion. If you can’t find a reason to oppose the diversion other than you live in Richland County and you don’t want Fargo to get what it wants, make up a narrative about how the project is meant only to protect Davies High. It’s a lie, but it’s easy and plays well in the bars.
School votes, no matter the district or the state or the amount of money being sought, are always an interesting study in humanity. They seem to bring out an inordinate number of cranks, those resentful curmudgeons who’ve managed to work their way through life without the slightest appreciation of education or those who do the educating.
I picture mostly aging men, whose children are long since out of the house, who like to sit around and bitch about kids these days and about how all these damn teachers are making too much money. Kids these days, of course, are like kids have always been — rambunctious, maddening, clueless, curious, loud, defiant and wonderful. As for teachers, their average salary in North Dakota is just more than $40,000 per year so it’s clear they’re all jetting off to St. Marten to enjoy spring break. Probably with your tax dollars.
When I think of the school-vote cranks, I think of Clint Eastwood and his classic line from “Gran Torino,” delivered from his front step: “Get off my lawn.” Old man, life has passed him by, and he’s suspicious of the new world around him.
This has to be what fuels the anti-education cliches, right?
“I don’t care if they get a new building, but why do they need a Taj Mahal?”
Translation: They do care if the district builds a new school, and they’d view anything new as a Taj Mahal.
“These teachers make all that money and only work nine months a year.”
Translation: I hate my job.
“Even if they don’t get it passed this time, they’ll just keep coming back until they’re able to shove it down our throats.”
Translation: I’m going to be opposed to spending money on schools, no matter how much or how little it is and no matter the form in which it’s presented.
“I don’t have any kids in the school district, so why do I have to pay?”
Translation: I am completely oblivious to the fact somebody before me paid for the schools in which my kids were educated.
“What the heck do these kids need all this technology? I never had any of it and I turned out just fine.”
Translation: I’m too stupid to realize every successive generation benefits from advancements in technology, whether the advancement is a ball-point pen or an iPad.
And on they go. I am buoyed by the fact that, for the most part, citizens of North Dakota and Minnesota see value in education and continued spending on it. In November 2013, Minnesota voters approved nearly 90 percent of the operating levies put before them. School districts saw similar success with building levies. Close to home, Pelican Rapids, Minn., approved a $21.9 million bond referendum even after a radical outside group was hired to stop it.
The lesson: Citizens in North Dakota and Minnesota, if given a good proposal on which to vote and if well-informed about the proposal, are willing to tax themselves to maintain or improve their schools.
The cranks might be the loudest, and the angriest, but they don’t always win. School supporters aren’t shoving anything down anybody’s throat. They are exercising democracy, something the cranks fully support until things don’t go their way.
(Mike McFeely is a talk-show host on 790 KFGO-AM in Fargo. Follow him on Twitter at @MikeMcFeelyKFGO.)